Hi All,
First time poster so please be kind.
I'm just starting to get interested in
AIS and boat/ship monitoring and just want to get an opinion on how I'll go in my circumstances.
Just a bit of background first. I live in Chatswood which is a suburb of
Sydney Australia. Chatswood is a built up area and my particular location is in an apartment building which is surrounded by office and residential buildings as you can see from the
photo below. Trying to listen to
marine chatter on my scanner isn't overly successful however my
antenna is most likely the culprit there. I also
monitor ADS-B (aircraft) using a dedicated 1090Mhz
antenna located on my balcony railing which is successful. I can easily pick up aircraft several hundred kms away however most of my signal for aircraft is due to reflection off of the office buildings I believe.
What I'm trying to
work out is whether I'll be able to pick up any
AIS signals in my circumstances.
As you can see from the below
photo, I have a view of office buildings. However the direction is technically facing a portion of
Sydney Harbour and the ocean eg. I'm not facing inland.
According to my
research I'm 5kms away from Sydney Harbour to my right. I'm also 10kms away from the Ocean straight ahead as per the arrows shown in the photo. I'm also around 100m above sea level (being on the 18th floor of my apartment building).
I'm also about to get this
3 ft AIS Marine Antenna (236-SW) - 3dB Gain antenna which I am going to mount on the railing about 2 feet away from my ADS-B antenna.
So with this information, how successful do you think I'll be in picking anything up?