Plane Plotter...My new toy.

                    HF condx have been absolutely appalling recently, so i've kept myself busy in the VHF/UHF parts of the spectrum, particularly ACARS and ADSB. I have been testing 3 ACARS specific decoders to use with my RTL-SDR (i have several programs that do it, but not to the fullest degree).
                    These programs were: ACARSD, KG-ACARS and Plane Plotter. ACARSD is a nice looking bit of software that presents images of the aircraft that are decoded as well as plotting these on a map, which the user must supply and calibrate (a frustrating experience if ever there was one!!). But i persisted and was rewarded with quite a good program....when it decoded. This is the only issue i had with ACARSD....it tended not to be as sensitive when compared against my benchmark software (MultiPSK, Sorcerer and PDW) and it was missing aircraft with very good signals. The user interface and setup are highly configurable and the price is right at zero,nada,zitch.
                    KG-ACARS is also free. However i had 2 main issues. 1) The GUI is in Japanese and fairly minimalist. There is an English instruction document within the download that is fairly good but also is a little ambiguous. I found this to be trickier to set up than the ACARSD map! 2) As the software is intended for use in Japan, we are warned that it may not decode ACARS TX from other international aircraft. A real shame in my books, because i thought this was a very nice program.
                    So we come to COAA's Plane Plotter. I had the free trial of this for a while until i had something to compare it to. I have to say that i LOVE this comprehensive, easy to set up and use, detailed, never skip a beat decoder! AT 25 Euros ($35 AUD) this delivers a lot of bang for your bucks. You don't get the pretty images of aircraft, oh no....this is a decoder for those who like straight forward data and modes. You get all of what the other 3 offer plus much more (but you still have to build and calibrate your own maps of course, after all...it's character building right?). It handles ADS-B, SBS, BEAST, RTL1090 (plus more) and even downloads satellite images for your area and plots them (satellites) at night. I purchased it 2 days ago and haven't stopped using it yet. I have run it alongside my benchmarks as well as watching flightradar24 to see if it was missing any contacts...nope. Money well spent.
                     In summary, there are many aviation programs out there ranging from free to VERY expensive. With the free ones, you get what you pay for and with the expensive ones....well, they're expensive! Plane Plotter sits nicely in between and is by no means average.
                     Here are just a few of the many available details:

Plotting on my (Googles) calibrated map

messages

aircraft view

details

Project 9: A coax collinear antenna for ADSB

           Another VERY quick antenna project to enable better reception for my ADSB system. I used the method described here: http://www.balarad.net/ by Dusan Balara (thank you!).
           The antenna is simply 8,12 or 16 (i went for 16) 116mm (plus 50mm) sections of coax, with each end of each section stripped allowing 25mm of solid core which is then inserted between the outer jacket and braid of the next, giving it an offset appearance. A small piece of plastic is placed between each of the core sections to avoid shorting. The joins can be taped if you're in a hurry, but i love using heat shrink and it restricts movement better.

16x116mm sections

plastic squares for insulating the cores

keeping the cores insulated

a small section of the completed 2metre long collinear. note the off center appearance.

The finished product (center) , added to my growing farm.

           A 2 metre section of sparkies conduit from bunnings is used to house and protect the collinear, seal the top (i found an old cap from a roll of copper that a plumber left behind), seal the base and up she went.
           This was the fastest of my builds to date (taking just over 45 minutes) and the cheapest. 2 metres of 75ohm RG6 cost $2, 4 metres of conduit ( i will use the other 2 metres on my next project) cost $4. I don't know how much this antenna would cost to buy, but i'm certain it won't be $6!!
           Apparently this antenna is said to have excellent "horizon" qualities, and this is indeed the case. In testing this evening, i am receiving aircraft far earlier and losing them far later than last nights session with the discone.

Using the RTL 2382U as an Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) receiver

          Ive been making good use of my RTL to receive ACARS with ACARSD recently and was looking for something a little more technical. Some googling led me to ADSB# which in turn led me to ADSBScope. Well, i spent 6 frustrating and ultimately fruitless hours of my life trying to get ADSB# to work, no matter what i did, even down to uninstalling the drivers, it just would not work. Then i found RTL1090. What a joy this piece of software is to install and use! RTL1090 is the necessary link between the dongle and ADSBScope, tuning to 1090MHz and providing the data for ADSBScope to plot.
         Both programs are well documented on the net and simple to install. At first i was dubious as to whether the dongle would actually work in the GHz range. Anecdotal evidence says it will, but each dongle seems to have its own intricacies. Fortunately,  the RELWITHDEB zip i downloaded contained a test file that indeed showed it could. (how much more can this great little stick achieve?? actually, i have read that it is possible to modify it to receive below 30MHz!!...but thats for another day).
         The following shots are taken just after i got it running and i have spent a very enjoyable day watching my "RADAR".

RTL 1090

ADSBScope

2 aircraft plotting

         

Playing around with SailMail PACTOR 3

Recently there has been some discussion in my UDXF group about the difficulties of decoding SailMail PACTOR 3, so i though i'd give it a shot. Surprisingly, i had no problems . This was decoded on 10474.7kHz using Sorcerer:

PACTOR 3 signal

PACTOR 2 preamble (i assume)

And the decoded PACTOR 3 data

Project 8: Turnstile Antenna for Weather (WX) Satellites

                           This turned out to be quite quick (about 4 hours) and easy. I used VK4LHD's construction method. The materials were under $50.

Only 8 parts

                           The aluminum tubing is cut into 6 lengths : 2 x 1200mm for the base reflectors and 4x 520mm for the top elements. These are inserted into a 40mm diameter/1000mm long pvc pipe with 1 hole drilled at 520mm  from the top and the second hole 550mm from the top and at 90 degrees to the first hole.

The 90 degree holes

                       

Bottom section

And top section done

The 4 way junction box is mounted to the top of the pipe by inserting a block into the end and screwing the junction box to it. The elements are drilled at one end to accomodate the terminals for the coax cable harness. I drilled 2 holes in the sides of the junction box to allow an access feed point for the coax.

The drilled elements

                         

The finished product

The turnstile mounted

Thats basically all there is to it. On the first pass of  NOAA 19 today, the image quality is vastly superior to any antenna i have tried before. Some more fine tuning and i should have some decent images. Here are some NOAA 18's after a bit of tinkering with WXtoIMG:

NOAA 18 26/5/2013*

NOAA 18 26/5/2013*

                                                 * Received with the RTL E4000 and SDR#                      

 

CB Days part2

                            

                              

The following year, 1979, was an exciting year for me. It started off with a few of us starting a cb radio club, and quickly grew to include most of us school mates and other teenagers from the area. We had meetings and organized get togethers, and almost nightly nets. A few years later it disbanded, as we all went seperate ways.

I purchased my first SSB rig later that year, a second hand but not very old Xtal XSSB 10-18. It was the RB-249 Australian approved 18 channel version of the 23 channel from the USA. While it didn't have a very good reputation at the time, and had very basic features, I found it a great little radio which performed excellently. Like the Fanon Fanfare182, the Xtal had the Aussie 18 with the corresponding US channels on the dial. It cost me $70, which was less than half of the new price in '79. The radio was probably the most compact SSB mobile of it's time, which I would say led to it's poor reputation, bigger obviously meant better back then. I also upgraded my antenna to a 5/8 ground plane from Tandy, and added a cheap desk microphone, a Vicom VM2. This new set up opened a new world and I made many DX contacts on SSB, and started collecting QSL cards. We had our own club printed cards to send, and a club PO Box. Sad to say, all my old cards were lost over the years. It served me very well the Xtal and never had a problem with it.
Cheers,
Mick 361.

                                          

Project 7 : AirBand Dipole

Another rainy day project! Recently, i have been making great use of my RTL Dongle with SDR# to cover the airband as well as local signals in the 118-170 MHz range. The problem: my Discone did not do a good enough job. The solution: a quick build dipole.
In keeping with spirit of this blog, i sourced the parts from an old tv antenna and a bit of pvc pipe i had left over from the multiband longwire build. The 2 elements were cut to 58cm and fed into the pipe...and thats it! Easy peasy.

The "new" Dipole mounted

SDR#

A welcome addition to my antenna family

The results are a fantastic improvement on the Discone. I'm picking up airports and aircraft  from all over the state as well as interstate. The signals are clear, particularly from the aircraft. I'm happy now that between both SDRs, i have HF and VHF Aero covered. As a test, i followed a Qantas international flight (listening on VHF) from take off, then on HF as it left our shores and ultimately tracked it using HFDL as it flew out over the Pacific.No shortage of interesting things to listen to once the cold days and nights really set in.Build time: approximately one hour.