Nooelec SAWbird+ ADS-B: Premium, Dual-Channel, Cascaded Ultra-Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) & Filter Module for Airplane Tracking Applications. 1090MHz (ADSB) and 978MHz (UAT) Center Frequencies

I'm not usually a review writer, but seeing as this is new and unreviewed, I'd add mine.Bottom Line: It works. It's easy. See the images one is "before" and one is "after" adding the unit. It basically doubled my range. (Your mileage may vary based on location).I'll start by saying my unit arrived and had the silkscreens on the "output" side reversed. I sent an email direct to Nooelec with this, and they replied within an hour saying it was a known thing on the first batch, apologized and explained how to get it connected correctly. Well done.Performance: I just plugged and played. I didn't change anything in my setup. The antenna coax goes to the LNA, and then a 6" cable to my SDR. I'm currently only using the ADS-B/1090mHz side. I'm powering the unit thought the micro USB with a standard Pi wall wart PSU. I have the antenna mounted on my chimney with about a 15ft run of cable. I live in a heavily wooded area and this really helped reception. I basically went from 50nm to right above 100nm. It also picks more lower level traffic closer to my location as well. On the average afternoon I went from ~10 visible aircraft on average to 25+.I'd say it's worth the investment.

Small and powerful. Filtered unwanted noise while extending range another 75 miles. At only 35’ in the air, the antenna has limited range without this device.

Using this to run both 1090 and 978 mhzs SDRs off a single antenna, worked perfectly off the bat with no adjustment needed for my previous dual antenna setup on my Pi.Testing this before hooking it up to a single antenna though, I did see a noticeable improvement on range as I did not have any bias tree power or filter in line on my setup before.

It does an amazing job enhancing signal reception for an ADSB antenna. I’m getting 1090 up to 250 nm.

I am using this mounted at the antenna for UAT 978 MHz with an FA orange SDR stick. It is powered by a Jetvision Bias-tee injector powered by the Raspberry Pi 5 USB port 75 feet on the other end of the cable. Compared to my old Uptronics filtered pre-amp, this Nooelec LNA/filter has much stronger amplification. 30 db stronger than the Uptronics. With the Orange stick I had to reduce dump978-fa gain setting nine 3db steps down from 16.6 (uptronics) to 1.4 (Nooelec) to get about the same minimum signal strength and noise floor. That equates to 27 db more gain with the Nooelec LNA, but I also have this LNA mounted at the antenna which is possible due to it's small size. If I mounted at the Raspberry Pi 5, the gain is 30 db stronger than the Uptronics in the same location since there is no cable run signal loss. I lose maybe about 3 db gain mounting the Nooelec at the antenna (heavily water seal taped) over around 70 feet of Airborne 10 cable.Performance mounted at the antenna is a bit better than when mounted at the Pi end. So kudos for this device's small size that makes that possible with some MacGyvering. It's nice the Nooelec can be powered through the COAX cable by bias tee injector at the Pi. However I'd give it 5 stars if it were a) housed in a water tight enclosure for easy antenna mounting, and b) also sold in a 978 Mhz only version since mounting it at the antenna while using separate 1090 MHz and 978 MHz antennas isn't really realistic with this combined 978/1090 LNA. Filtered LNAs mounted at the antenna will always perform better over longer cable runs. It's sad that we still have few practical options to mount filtered LNAs at the antenna. And this device isn't cheap.I hope Nooelec can understand this and produce some filtered LNAs that are waterproof and designed for at the antenna mounting.So, good quality, good results. But for the price, the implementation of this device for optimal antenna mounted performance is cumbersome at best. I'm not certain my tape sealed enclosure mounted at the antenna will be reliable over the upcoming PNW 9-month rainy season. We shall see!

I had high hopes for this preamp, but unfortunately in my situation it barely improved signal strength and then after less that two weeks it failed entirely. My setup is a Raspberry Pi running the ADSBExchange image, connected to both the 1090 Blue and 978 Orange ADSBExchange SDR dongles. I was running 42 dB gain on the blue stick and then after installing the SawBird lowered the gain on the SDR to about 3 dB (using higher gain on the SDR's internal LNA, and using no gain, both resulted in worse performance than no SawBird at all. You can see in the performance graph attached the results -- it's difficult to see an improvement but it seems like it's there. Likely I'm limited by surrounding terrain, and despite being in an urban area I don't have enough out-of-band signals to make the SAW filters help much. In any event, I was happy with the very slight improvement, however after less than two weeks performance suddenly dropped. I checked and both white indicator LEDs were dark despite the unit having good USB power. Removing the SawBird and going back to the SDR's internal LNA restored the signals to previous levels. So -- like one of the reviews below, it looks like mine burnt out after a few weeks also. I'll see if I can return it for a refund!

I picked this for use with my ADSB application and it did a wonderful job for about 2-3 months. It extended my unamplifed range from 100NM to nearly 250NM, however... after a few months, I noticed my stats suddenly dropped and began investigating, turns out this device bit the bullet and was no longer providing even 5% of it's original output. I have pyro lighting arrestors in place as well as filters in place to protect this device but it seems to have stopped inexplicably. After removing the device and changing my SDR to max amplification, range was restored to roughly 2/3rds of what it once was.I was very impressed with it originally but disappointed that it didn't last long. Shame.