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R
06-06-2025I bought this stick to replace a RTL-SDR dongle. I thought that the built-in filter would yield better performance, but this was not the case. Using it with a Pi Zero W running PiAware, there was a huge decrease in the number of flights seen (from around 1800 per day to only 200 or so). Maybe I got a bad unit or something, since it also runs hot. The RTL-SDR also gets hot, but at least it has a metal case to act as a heatsink. You can see in the attached picture when I was using the AirNav FlightStick versus the RTL-SDR dongle, and its like night and day.
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Chris W
Greater than one weekWorks very well picking up ADS-B 200 miles aware
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Josh Duck
> 3 dayCompared to a Flightaware pro blue stick with LNA and filter this cheaper alternative works the same. I get the same amount of aircraft with both, which is a drastic improvement over using a non purpose built RTL receiver.
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jburns
> 3 dayThis is much better than the other 2 sdr I have purchased. My range is so much better , I couldnt be happier. Just ordered 2 more, will use them with Flightradar24, flightaware and radarbox setups
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james s smith
> 3 dayIt does work. It’s better than the cheap Chinese ones with no amp. This is no where near the performance of the flightaware pro plus for the same money
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buy more stuff
> 3 dayShould provide a similar result as the flightaware product. Its smaller and has less plastic in case. Use flexible cables on both ends to avoid breaking off connectors.
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Zak Winnick
Greater than one weekHaving also used the FlightAware USB stick with a Raspberry Pi, I was looking forward to trying out the new USB dongle from RadarBox. I was surprised to see that it was the exact same one as the FlightAware stick, but thats a good thing. I was more afraid of the setup process. Im a fairly technical person (My day job is playing IT Director for a Hospitality company), but I had some issues with the FA stick and an RPi. With the free software that RadarBox provides from their website, it was a 3 minute process to get everything up and running! Im curious to see if this will work with the FA software on my RPi as well, because if it does, then this would be a great, cheaper alternative to that for the same data.
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Scott
> 3 dayLove it. I had a NESDR Nano 2 with a proper ADS-B antenna on our roof. This has taken my max coverage in some directions from ~60 miles to 150 miles. I had previously configured my setup with the NESDR Nono2, RTL1090 software, Virtual Radar Server software and Plane Finder feeder client on my PC. I swapped out the NESDR Nano 2 with the green FlightStick, stopped RTL1090 and restarted it, and I was up and running in less than 20 seconds.