Acxico 1Pcs ADS-B 1090MHZ PCB Antenna ANT

My company is a subcontractor for a larger development contract involving air traffic surveillance, and finding the best value for the components was on our shopping list. Full disclosure up front, this review is NOT based on a true benchmark test where the antenna's ability to receive the frequency it's supposedly tuned for is determined and stated in quantitative terms or numbers. So if your looking for RFI figures, signal loss, true measured impedance, or any other metrics to determine if this is what you need, sorry. This review is as qualitative as it gets, and even then the scope of the assessment is very limited. If you're curious as to whether this 8 dollar component is worth 8 dollars, especially when compared to some of the higher priced equivalents available, BOOM.So what is it? It's a passive antenna which is being sold as being optimized to receive a sliver of bandwidth with 1090MHz representing the target. Because it's passive, because it is equipped with now active or passive filters, and because RF can be a squirrely spectrum from time to time, it most likely delivers the 1090MHz signal to the receiver chock full of other random signals from across a wide band of RF frequencies. We'll likely throw on a Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) and active SAW Band-Pass filter at the base of whatever antenna we eventually go with, but for the purposes of weeding out the low performers early, we just set it up clean. If you have ever had an opportunity to observe a visual depiction (waterfall display) of the bandwidth of RF signals even a tuned antenna brings in, you'd understand why. Suffice to say, using a passive tuned antenna without filters will only perform so well.To be honest, we ordered this thing on a whim, almost as an exercise in what we thought was going to be the worst option looked like. It isn't as slick as a black whip antenna, it kind of looks hokey, oh and it is priced at just over 8 bucks. So we ordered it, and mostly forgot we ordered it, and placed it in cubby with the other baseline antennas to be cycled through our eyeball assessment. Picking it up, it doesn't have that "high quality" feel, but it did come equipped with a standard SMA connection, so that was a plus. Having to use adaptors with some of the others is pretty much an auto-fail from the start. In our experience, you want to minimize to the greatest possible extent the number of physical connections between an antenna and it's receiver. For every connection required, the probability of RFI and signal loss are increased, seemingly exponentially at that.So we finally made our way through the pile and found the odd duck in our hands. For what it's worth, we were testing with 2 setups, the first was an RTL-SDR v3 which was running on a Windows laptop so we could see the signal's waterfall display. The second was a Nooelec Nano 2.0 riding on a Raspberry Pi Zero W, so just about as simple as it gets. To see what the reception looked like, we ran the latest PiAware (4.0?) instance on the Zero, a setup which is remarkably efficient and effective. So what did we see?I won't discuss the signal waterfall because it was pretty messy, exactly what was expected, and no worse than any of the other equivalent antennas. What I will talk about is what we saw on the PiAware screens we were all monitoring on our phones through the router assigned local IP address. Before I get into this, you should understand that when we all saw the performance difference between this antenna and basically all the other passive equivalents, we immediately began swapping those other antennas back onto the Nooelec Nano 2 in an attempt to both confirm what we were seeing, and ensure there wasn't an unidentified variable at play. We'll never really know the answer to the latter, but there was absolutely something about this antenna that the Nooelec Nano 2 really liked!The setup of this test was far from standardized or scrutinized in any way that actually benchmarking engineers are OCD about, and probably bordered on being characterized as 'hokey'. But I'm willing to bet, the vast majority of folks who are shopping for this type of antenna at this price-point aren't going to be setting up the next Lincoln Labs clean room facilities with their new antenna. Like many people will, we mounted the antennas at an exterior window with roughly a 45 degrees arc making up the antenna's relative line of sight to the sky. We're under the approach corridors for BWI, DCA, Andrews AFB, and are just outside the DC SFRA surrounding the entire DC Metro area. That said, the antennas had plenty of fish in the barrel to include high altitude (FL180 to FL450ish) enroute commercial aircraft, mid-level (5,000 AGL to 9000 AGL) arrival and departure commercial aircraft, low altitude (below 3,000 AGL) general aviation aircraft poking holes in the sky, low altitude rotary-wing aircraft flying to and from accidents and hospitals, and the occasional mid-level high speed transit of a flight of 3 F-16s, which of course have no intention of transmitting anything they don't want, much less what the FAA wants them to. The results had been mind-numbingly consistent for nearly every antenna we had tried from the passive tuned unfiltered pile. We were seeing pretty much everything on that side of the building with range being directly relational to altitude of the aircraft. For those in the enroute phase of flight operating the upper airways, we were seeing about 100 - 130 miles out in the window's direction. The vast majority of flight tracks were falling between 4000 AGL and 10,000 AGL, and usually not more than 50 - 60 miles away. If a small aircraft, fixed or rotary-wing was operating below 3,000 AGL, we hear them before we saw them visually and before the ADS-B signal was able to find a clear line of sight and plot on our displays. Again, given the hokey nature of this test, none of this surprised any of us.Then someone across the room asked "What the heck did you just do" to the individual who had just replaced one antenna for this 8 dollar square thing. "What do you mean, what did I do?". He was asking what he did based on his PiAware track display suddenly coming to life with what we eventually estimated to be 3 - 4 X the volume of traffic we had been seeing all day. Obviously we were just seeing an arrival surge at one of the airports, but that theory would hold no water as we swapped out this square antenna with the others over and over. We were repeatedly seeing lots of aircraft, they would disappear, and then just a small portion would return to the displays. The only constant was that this 8 dollar square antenna was somehow receiving the ADS-B transmissions from 4 times the number of aircraft than any other antenna we tried. All the metrics increased in some way, in one case plotting an enroute aircraft transiting over Philly! This antenna was capable of receiving these ADS-B transmissions originating from every one of the airborne aircraft and operational profiles I mentioned earlier and providing the SDRs with a cleaner signal which yielded more aircraft track plots. Here's the weird thing, while it wasn't very far in terms of distance from our location, this thing was plotting aircraft flying BEHIND us, with no clear line of sight of anything! HF or shortwave signals at the butt-crack of dawn have been known to demonstrate this phenomenon, but certainly not a signal being carried at that frequency and being pushed with the limited power that ADS-B Out transmitters are built for. There is a reason the FAA ensured the entire country was covered with ADS-B receivers and the system was built like a giant repeater network!So, I can't tell you why this was the case, whether or not all these antennas will perform like this, or if we were just lucky and received the magic wand version of this antenna. I do know these performance differences have been consistently repeated in the same and other locations. I do know that it cost us less than a froo froo drink at the coffee hut. And I do know that we're sourcing a few more to determine if this was a fluke, or this thing is the real deal. Really, if you stand back and characterize it's performance, it basically performed at the level one would expect a $250 setup with a high quality active filter and pre-amp equipped bias tee powered antenna. For $8.00.

I wanted to put my antenna in the attic, so figured I'd buy a 5M cable and would need a cheap antenna - for $10 I figured I'd try this before spending $60-100 and I am super happy that I did.I've never seen more than 20 craft at once, I plug this in (same position as orig antenna that saw 9 planes) and I could suddenly see 35 aircraft - just amazing!!

Great antenna if you're looking for something with decent performance to use indoors. I measured a 1.1:1 SWR and it picked up a good number of aircraft with my ADS-B receiver. For comparison I made a 1/4 wave ground plane antenna which has a 1.2:1 SWR but provided even better ADS-B performance. So while it's possible to find a more sensitive antenna this PCB antenna is a solid choice for the price.

I don't have hard numbers comparing the performance of this dipole to say, a quarter-wave mono-pole, but this antenna performs pretty well in my opinion, and for a very reasonable price (I paid under $10). The attached graph illustrates typical performance with my PiAware rig.

I've been running this antenna and my old loadcoil monopole side by side to compare performance. Same position, same SDR, same kind of cable, same kind of Pi, same software. In the five days I've had this antenna installed, my maximum peak range has increased by 50 nautical miles, and the average maximum range has more than doubled to 68 miles. Many more planes are detected, and for longer. I'm stuck in an apartment situation and can't place antennas outside, so I have to put them in windows. This antenna has helped make my detection footprint less embarrassing. See screenshots for range comparison. Teal outline is the max range in that azimuth. Colored circles are at 50 nmi intervals.If you're still using a cheap monopole with or without the load coil, this antenna should be in your shopping cart. Hard to beat at this price without having to wait for two months for the slow boat to arrive.

I bought this as an upgrade to the stock rtl-sdr antenna (rabbit ears)... sadly this offers no noticeable improvement to ADS-B reception. Very disappointed.

Outstanding performance! The ADS-B performance of this antenna is better than any other antenna I have. It's a very cost-effective design using a dual-sided PCB to "print" a multi-element vertical antenna. Obviously the antenna will require some sort of housing if it is placed outside. That's how you're saving so much money on this antenna. PVC pipe will work okay, but will absorb some of the RF - you may want to experiment.If you are looking to try ADS-B on your SDR, want good performance, but don't want to spend much money, this is the way to go. I just wish there were similar antennas for other frequencies (hint, hint).

I took a chance on this and it turned out to be exceptionally good for its price. Matches performance of a much more expensive fiberglass antenna on Amazon. I have it hanging in an attic window that has no screen. Where it has unobstructed view its getting reception out to 175-200NM. Granted, at that distance most everything is over 25,000 ft. Even in directions where the house is blocking the signal its getting out to 150NM. As soon as the wind dies down, I'll try it on the roof and see if its any better. I am pleased with it and would recommend it. Its likely better than anything you can build easily and much better than the desktop magnetic mount wire ground plane.