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Newbie Question...

Introduce yourself here and feel free to ask any "newbie" questions that any of the beginners to the hobby have
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Chris526
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Mar 12, 2015 2:46 pm

Newbie Question...

Post by Chris526 » Mon Apr 06, 2015 11:44 am

Hi,

New to this forum & recently purchased a couple of airband scanners that I've connected to an external Diamond 777 antenna.

I use this equipment in conjunction with the free FlightRadar24 website to monitor aircraft movements to see where an aircraft actually is whilst listening to them.

I've recently been looking at ADS-B receivers, and notice there's been a huge price drop in the Airnav RadarBox 3D product. There appears to be much debate surrounding eventual subscription charges & naughty data uploading by them to re-sell, but £100 seems like a worthwhile investment to me (for my needs) compared with more expensive systems (such as the Kinetic SBS-3). It would also enable me to upgrade to FlightRadar24 'Premium' should I chose to share my data with them & thereby increase coverage for other users too.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated & apologise If I've incorrectly posted it into the wrong section!

Kind regards,

Chris :)

marpleman
Posts: 346
Joined: Sun Feb 09, 2014 4:41 pm
Location: Marple Bridge, Cheshire, overlooking approach into EGCC

Re: Newbie Question...

Post by marpleman » Wed Apr 08, 2015 10:12 pm

Hi Chris
Welcome to the Forum!

I've had a Radarbox for around six or seven years. Never let me down at all. For that price it's an absolute bargain.

In my opinion there are possibly two reasons for its significant fall in price;
- there is allegedly a RadarBox dongle advertised on the web at a very low price (£30 ish if I remember correctly) that claims to do what the current box does??
- AirNav no longer see any commercial gain from being in this market so stockists are doing a "fire" sale, possibly since FR24 and Planefinder have stolen a lot of the thunder both RadarBox and SBS had?

I chose the RadarBox over SBS as to me it was more user friendly and easier to interpret at the time, purely a personal view.

If I was being negative, it would be the significant lack of development of the product over the entire period over which I've owned my box. In my opinion "3D" is nothing more than a gimmick that soon becomes cumbersome and un-realistic, however you can just re-install 2D software or de-select the 3D option on the boxed software very easily.

It has no Mlat capability, and non ADS-B craft do not plot on the map, but are just detailed in the aircraft interface, so you have to rely on FR24 to see where they are.
Not sure how SBS differs in this respect?

The database that comes pre-loaded with the product was next to useless, however a small team of volunteers (of which I was one of the pioneers) have improved this significantly over the last few years and it is now very good and reliable.

In a nutshell, for the price I have even thought about buying a back up box, as I love it to bits and would give me an alternative to lugging my existing box up and down the country when out and about.
Given I paid close to £400 for mine, the current price is really very reasonable whatever the future holds for AirNav, as the product will always work irrespective of the lack of development.

Let me know if you need any further advice/info?

I'm sure there are members on here who can similarly praise the SBS range and I don't doubt it's performance for one minute!

Hope this helps you decide

Regards
Rich

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