17.01.2024
Our market novelty: professional flight tracking for airports
- Flight Director: New cloud solution for regional airports – Reduced workload and increased safety in flight operations
- ADS-B receiver in a class of its own – back toa pre-corona pricing – Passing on reduced material costs for Air!Squitters
- Mast preamplifier with extremely low noise figure of 0.4 dB – The lower, the better
- New cable type improving reception and range
- Beware of PoE adapters – Destruction of ADS-B receivers
- New year – our motto remains
Flight Director: New cloud solution for regional airports – Reduced workload and increased safety in flight operations
We are launching a new, unique software solution for regional and club airfields. The “Flight Director” supports flight controllers and airport operators with precise positioning, automatic take-off and landing detection and connections to the main flight log, third party billing systems and much more. After a successful test phase at several airports in the DACH region, our market innovation is now online as a full version with a revised, modern user interface.
ADS-B receiver in a class of its own – back to pre-Corona pricing – Passing on reduced material costs for Air!Squitters
What’s more, availability is assured again: with few to no Air!Squitters in our jetvision web shop during the corona supply shortage, inventory has now again been secured. On the other hand, the components costs have almost returned to pre-corona levels. We are passing on this cost savings to our loyal Air!Squitter customer base: back to pre-corona pricing.
Mastvorverstärker mit Rauschzahl von 0,4 dB – Weniger ist mehr
Our latest product, the OPA-1090AS mast preamplifier, underlines our technical lead in Mode-S, ADS-B and FLARM reception technology with a remarkable noise figure of just 0.4 dB. The noise figure is a decisive factor for first-class signal quality, as it indicates the ratio of signal noise at the input to the output – the less, the better.
Another important factor is an optimally tuned gain of 17 dB in total, which prevents the downstream receiver from being overloaded. The preamplifier receives DC power from a remote power supply through the coaxial cable and is protected with a well proven external housing for pole mounting. The OPA-1090AS mast preamplifier is characterized by high-quality N-type sockets and precisely milled and screwed components without plastic or tinplate, the result of our many years of experience and expertise in the design of outdoor solutions.
The OPA-1090AS significantly extends the range of your ADS-B receiver when long coax cables have to be used or insensitive receivers need to be improved, allowing you to see more aircraft covering a larger area. Seamless integration into existing ADS-B receiver equipment is made possible by the user-friendly design. The preamplifier is compatible with all common ADS-B receivers and antennas and is supplied with a bias tee that provides the required supply voltage from a USB port or USB power supply.
To minimize interference in following devices and ensure optimum signal quality, our premium ADS-B preamplifier is equipped with filters specially selected for the application. The jetvision OPA-1090AS preamplifier offers the ideal solution for an upgrade if you cannot use our Active Diapason antenna or want to improve existing systems.
Please note:
- Due to the integrated filters, use with combined ADS-B/GPS antennas is not possible.
- Multiple preamplifiers in a chain shall not be used.
- The use of a preamplifier downstream of an active antenna is also not recommended.
- This preamplifier is unidirectional – hence transmitting is not possible.
Beware of PoE adapters – Destruction of ADS-B receivers
Service advisory for Radarcape and Air!Squitter customers: The idea is a good one. To operate a Radarcape or Air!Squitter as close as possible to the antenna, perhaps in the attic, i.e. with a short cable. Unfortunately, there is no power socket. A PoE (Power over Ethernet) adapter could provide a remedy – the power is then supplied remotely and the jetvision receiver only requires a network cable.
Unfortunately we have recently seen increases in Air!Squitter and Radarcape repairs where the units have been destroyed by overvoltage caused by certain 24V PoE adapters. We have now been able to verify this in our lab: various PoE adapter models with 24V PoE input tested are sometimes supplying the full input voltage directly to their outputs and that is as soon as the external antenna is connected to the Radarcape or Air!Squitter. Statistically this effect seems purely random. Unfortunately, due to the large number of manufacturers and models, we can neither publish a positive nor a negative list of affected PoE adapters. What we can say is that PoE adapters with 2 x 2 x 10 cm dimension have not demonstrated the failure while apparently only those adapters with an approx. 8 x 5 x 2.5 cm housing are causing this faulty behavior. If in doubt or if you have any further questions, please contact [email protected].
New cable type improving reception and range
We generally offer the best possible components at attractive prices – high performance without compromise. For this reason, our previous CO100AF cables will step by step be replaced by the new LMR240 cable type. Visible from the outside, CO100AF is white, while LMR240 has a black sheathing.
The technical specification of LMR240 impresses with a 1 dB reduced attenuation at 10m length and 1090MHz – this means improved reception, more visible aircraft within a greater range. Depending on the antenna location, this is around 3-5% more aircraft.
Mechanically, the LMR240 cable is somewhat stiffer and more stable. To protect the connectors from dirt and mechanical damage until final mounting, our LMR240 cables are now supplied with protective caps on both ends. In addition, for your convenience, the length of the cable is printed on one side.
Our LMR240 Cable Product Change Notification contains a comparison of the most important parameters, the Datasheet Cable LMR240 can also be found in our webshop.
