Hi Keith,
I frequently check glidertracker.org to see what is being received by PWKingsto OGN-R ground station.
Yesterday I saw tracks for two aircraft, one a glider and Flarm equipped, the other PAW equipped, at a similar height and in close proximity. Aha, at last, the PAW user should receive a rebroadcast of the glider location and relative height, I thought to myself. To my consternation I saw that the glider was being received by UKUSK Ground station even though PWKingstone is closer and in theory should be receiving higher signal strength (based on reception of the PAW signal), so NO rebroadcast as not working the same ground station!
I took the two screenshots below, showing the receive data for each aircraft. The glider has effectively passed my ground station and was consistently being picked up by UKUSK out to his Port side whereas the PAW aircraft was consistently being received by my station. In fact, the glider went out of reception for 1 min 46 secs so in reality would be slightly further West when their paths crossed but still didn’t appear to get picked up by the closer ground station. Being at the same location and height I don’t think the problem can be terrain shielding, I seem to be able to receive Flarm contacts OK, so wondered if this could be due to antenna shielding/masking problem with this glider or is there likely to be another explanation? I have noticed with the RAF Tutor aircraft, when in a turn, they frequently get received by OGN stations dependent on which direction they are pointing so perhaps this isn’t as silly as it sounds?
Chris
sorry but unable to attach screenshots as files too large. Will post as soon as I’ve worked out how to do it or post JPEG which also gets thrown out!