The Quickest Antenna Design of the Year

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2021-06-08 01:00:07

During a recent weekend, I found myself with some parts laying around which I hadn't used in quite a while. First in the bin was an old Orange Pi One1 (an underpowered SBC similar to the Raspberry Pi) which I was going to use to run a video conferencing screen but which proved to be unable to run the graphical Linux installation well enough to be usable. My RTL-SDR2 stick also happened to be out (I can't actually remember why I grabbed it a few weeks ago for the first time in years). As I cleaned everything up and got ready to put it away, I realized that I was probably never going to use this stuff again, so instead of trashing it I decided to put it to good use!

I'm often interested in looking at real-time aviation data, especially when a plane or helicopter is flying nearby. I've even used my RTL-SDR to capture and decode ADS-B3 packets in the past. This time, I decided to create a networked ADS-B receiver node and feed the data into websites such as Flightaware4 and Flightradar245. The only problem was, I did not want to spend a bunch of time on it - not much more than it would have taken to throw everything into the garbage!

I knew that in an effort to minimize the installation time, this thing was going in the attic - no way was I going to expend the effort required to run cables outside the house nor entertain the idea of weatherproofing the device. I already had power available and a router with an open Ethernet port right in the middle of the middle of the attic (A consequence of running an old WRT54G with enough power to get Wi-Fi anywhere in my woods). Not only would time not permit me to run cabling external to the house, but until I petition for wifely approval of an antenna tower or convert a tall tree, there's no higher point to mount the antenna than the attic. One easy method to mount a bare PCB to the attic rafters was a 3D printed frame with points to screw the board in along with an almond-shaped hole to support the entire thing.

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