Thanks - the issue I have us that all of the “opening up” of settings will make no difference if the PAW unit isn’t showing more than a few aircraft on the Traffic page.
We ran the unit first with the antennas on the roof of the truck outside yet hangar. Didn’t pick up much traffic but thought maybe we were shielded by the hangar. Installed the unit in the aircraft, positioned it outside away from the hangar, tried a number of different orientations to make sure the antennas had a line-of-sight to London, and still only a few very local aircraft being shown on the Traffic page.
I have got some other antennas kicking about back at base so will maybe try them to see if it is an antenna problem.
Hi again mutley,
After building, every PAW unit is run on a test rig prior to dispatch to check that everything is as it should be, so faulty units are virtually unknown, which is why having determined that you are getting ‘All Greens’ on the Home Screen, we’ve been concentrating on settings.
My earlier point was that with extremely limited GA traffic about, you are
highly unlikely to see
any PilotAware or SkyEcho traffic at the moment unless someone you know to be so equipped is flying locally with their equipment operational at the time you are testing. This only leaves commercial ADS-B (potentially visible at up to 100 miles or so), or High Power CAT Mode-S - which is much less prevalent since the loss of FlyBe and will
only show on the Traffic Screen if you have Mode C/S detection enabled - it is ‘Off by Default’ - and Mode C/S Horizontal Sensitivity set to ‘Long Range’ and something like +/- 40,000ft (for testing).
With the settings I advised above, you should expect to see at least some ADSB traffic, though you will need to be patient. Goodwood is still a fairly long way away from the likes of Heathrow and Gatwick, and I’m not sure how busy Southampton is just now, so you might have to wait a while. I am only a few miles from Edinburgh Airport and my Ground Station, which on 1090 covers most of Scotland and Northern England with optimised high gain antennas, often has long gaps with no traffic whatsoever at the moment.
It is of course ‘possible’ that the 1090 internal antenna might not be performing as well as expected, though I am not aware of a high failure rate. 1090 signals can usually be picked up on the proverbial ‘piece of wet string’, but make sure that the antenna is vertical (or as near as possible) and that it is properly connected to the correct antenna connection (though if you’ve got them the wrong way round you should still receive 1090 signals on the 869.5 antenna). Next carefully open the end case of the Rosetta and make sure that the pigtail cable is properly connected into the receiver dongle and that the dongle is properly seated in the USB socket. If after rebooting and waiting a while you are still seeing no traffic and have another suitable antenna give it a try, or even try a length of fine wire which fits neatly into the centre of the 1090 antenna socket, or directly into the inner point of the socket on the receiver dongle itself (missing out the ‘pigtail’). Any length over a few centimetres will do - longer isn’t an issue for this test. Don’t however try this trick on the 869.5MHz P3i side though as it could damage the transmitter.
Let us know how you get on.
In either case, it would be useful if you could post screenshots of the Home, Configure and Traffic Screens, so we can see for ourselves what is (or isn’t) showing.
Best Regards
Peter