ADSB. ACARS. VDL2. Data Decoding website for Southern California

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thebaldgeek

thebaldgeek
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We have increased the ground stations to 60.
Is there somewhere we can look up their codes to find their locations?

Added the filter for 12404A. We will see about tweaking the code so you can put any ground station in and it will filter for that one.
It might be Mexico. Here is a heat map of 15 hours of VDL location reports;
vld heat map capture.PNG

You can run this any time you like via the multi-fuction map and check the layers you want.
PHX generated this yesterday and is actively looking to bump up his coverage after he saw it. <grin>

I will leave the CPDLC filter as it is then. It's an easy string to search for and trap. AT1 can get lost pretty easily....

HFDL... yeah. Nice catch... I am a little embarrassed about that one... We have a huge noise floor. I think it's all the computer gear we are running. (I have 89 devices on my home network).
Bottom line, I know it needs improving and its pretty high on the todo list. I am running a north-south end fed long wire. We are in a HOA so have to be a little careful how much wire we put in the air, it's also a pretty small block of land, so again, the end feed is way easier than a dipole. Its an Alinco RX.
Also on my todo list to update the station list on that setup.
We have added the CPDLC filter/section to the HF filters.
 
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AirScan

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We have increased the ground stations to 60. Is there somewhere we can look up their codes to find their locations?

60 works. So far in your logs I've seen 43 different ground station ID's. I'm not aware of any official source to ID the codes. There are lists being put together by various groups based on personal monitoring. Some can be found here (although I'm suspect of the accuracy of some entries).

https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/ACARS

Also a good thread about ground stations on the forum here with more info. (see post #87 on how to decode SITA stations)

https://forums.radioreference.com/threads/vdl2-ground-stations.360684/

Another good source is the acars-vdl2 groups.io site, updated lists are posted and they have a verified database as well.

acars-vdl2 groups.io Group

Added the filter for 12404A. We will see about tweaking the code so you can put any ground station in and it will filter for that one.
It might be Mexico.

I've only seen Southwest flights using it so far. Now I'm thinking maybe its a Southwest proprietary ground station ?

AS
 

thebaldgeek

thebaldgeek
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Minor tweaks to the code overnight.
The filter now works for either ground station or aircraft HEX ID's.
The clearing of the table is a little funky, I might take out the clear button rather than fix it. <grin>

Found and fixed a bug in the 60 ground station table, it's now working as it should.

My buddy in PHX is a big Southwest guy and states that most of the VDL traffic we are seeing is from that carrier.

The heat map looks better after PHX swapped antennas.

I suspect that we are hearing ground station traffic, but that the dumpVDL decoder (not my software) is not reporting it correctly.

Thanks again for your input and suggestions @AirScan.
If you (or anyone else here) have any for another part of the site, just let me know and I will see what I can do.
 

AirScan

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The filter now works for either ground station or aircraft HEX ID's.

That's a handy option, thanks for that.

I suspect that we are hearing ground station traffic, but that the dumpVDL decoder (not my software) is not reporting it correctly.

There is an option in dumpvdl2 to turn off ground station reception, do they have that set by mistake ? Hopefully they can figure it out, uplinks from the ground station would be a nice bonus, and would probably quadruple the amount of data you are getting.

I'm about 3 miles from the airport here and getting good VDL ground station reception, although it can be a bit finicky if the antenna is not just in the right position.

Just watching now and I see INMARSAT CPDLC logs coming up on the PIREP section of the VDL page. (just being picky but you have the page labeled as VLD instead of VDL).

There are some guys over in the UK doing the same sort of thing, feeding multiple stations into a central database. They don't have a live output (AFAIK) but feed the data into a searchable database. The messages are stored for a week then rolled out, right now a weeks worth of data contains just over 2 million messages. How feasible would it be to set up a searchable database like that for your data ? Just a thought, sorry not trying to overload you with projects.

Cheers,

AS
 

thebaldgeek

thebaldgeek
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Further refinement and bug fixes overnight and 3:30am this morning. Thanks for pointing out the bugs!

Also did a little work on the map, the VDL and ACARS aircraft now hang around for 2 minutes before they drop off the map, makes it a bit easier to see their locations.

I really like the live aspect of the system and want to be sure to keep that.
That said, I am going to see if I can put some data into a DB in the next code churn and see what the result is.
I can see how it would be powerful for all aspects of the system to have some storage.... It will take my coding skills to new levels and... well.. yeah, it will be tricky, but worthwhile I suspect.
 

thebaldgeek

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Started the database code. Have it limping for ACARS messages.
There is a new UI page (Called a Tab) that sorts the messages by latest for each aircraft.
The plan is to feed this data into the map so when you click on an aircraft, it pops up with the latest information for that aircraft.

It's sort of a hybrid solution, it keeps the live nature of the site, but provides some history.
Most of all, it's a work in progress.
 

N1XDS

ÆS Ø
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Started the database code. Have it limping for ACARS messages.
There is a new UI page (Called a Tab) that sorts the messages by latest for each aircraft.
The plan is to feed this data into the map so when you click on an aircraft, it pops up with the latest information for that aircraft.

It's sort of a hybrid solution, it keeps the live nature of the site, but provides some history.
Most of all, it's a work in progress.

By chance do you know if there will be any ACARS decoder for Windows? I am using Dump1090, PlanePlotter, VRS, MilAirComms1090 and ADSB Exchange.
 

morfis

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Jan 24, 2004
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By chance do you know if there will be any ACARS decoder for Windows?

Lowe Airmaster
Timewave/AEA ACARS
Multipsk
Code3
RadioRaft
Wacars
KG-Acars
acarsd
acarsdec
PDW
Airnav acars decoder
skyspy
Planeplotter

I'm sure there are many more I have missed but it's late in the night (actually, more morning now)
 

thebaldgeek

thebaldgeek
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It does not look like much, but we are now storing all messages to MySQL and keeping the past hour.
I am now working on a way to select and sort the data in a meaningful way.
 

thebaldgeek

thebaldgeek
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Does RadioRaft require a interface....
Yes, it looks like it requires a simple Op-Amp to demodulate the audio into an RS232 port.
The details are on the RadioRaft website.

Note, this is not what I am using to decode ACARS.....
 

thebaldgeek

thebaldgeek
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Big night of coding last night.....
We have the MySQL database in and running.
I saw a flight this morning with landing gear issues and tracked his return to LAX via ACARS messages.

2019-02-15 14:13:53 131.725 N375FE 10 FX0841 150841/OPSCTL/DA KONT/DS KMEM/FOB 060000 /FTX GEAR UNSAFEAFTR T/O LT GEARWONT RETRACT DIVERTING TO LAX.

Then we were able to track the flight in FlightAware.

1550244051468.png

I could go to my Database page and get all the messages from the past hour from this aircraft that my system had received.
Thanks for the prodding @AirScan the fork in the code was well worth it and I now have a better grasp of T-SQL queries.
 

kma371

QRT
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With permission from baldgeek, I went and added my VRS feed of Northern and Central California to his feed. Coverage includes ADS-B & MLAT receivers, one in the east SF Bay Area, two in the Central Valley and one in the Sierra Foothills. To see the specific coverage, you would need to change the receiver to the one marked "Northern California"
 

thebaldgeek

thebaldgeek
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I have spent the last week getting Fightairmap installed on my server.
You can view it here; http://thebaldgeek.net:2280/

I am not sure the 3D model fly-along is working, to be honest, that is not my focus, but rather the data analytics.
The 2D map will show the latest ACARS messages for each selected aircraft as they are received and decoded.

Let me know if you have any questions.
 

BM82557

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Berkeley Co WV
I have spent the last week getting Fightairmap installed on my server.
You can view it here; http://thebaldgeek.net:2280/

I am not sure the 3D model fly-along is working, to be honest, that is not my focus, but rather the data analytics.
The 2D map will show the latest ACARS messages for each selected aircraft as they are received and decoded.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Nice job!! Thanks for your time and effort.
 

thebaldgeek

thebaldgeek
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SoCal
Small but important update.....
We are now running HFDL from Phoenix.
In one hour, we got as many messages as I got in a day when we were running the HF from Temecula.
I will be tweaking the HFDL section of the website to improve the message display and filtering.
 
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thebaldgeek

thebaldgeek
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The HFDL seems to be working far better than we could hope. (Many thanks to my friend for dedicating a radio to the task).
We are hitting around 2000+ messages a day on 6mhz.
I have built some code to pull out the position reports.
Here is a heat map of 1 hour of those reports.
1551673212700.png
 

AirScan

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tbg,

Thanks for the updates and all your work on this !

I was just wondering, if it's not to much trouble, is there an easy way to increase the number of VDL ground stations displayed ? Right now with 60 it fills up, so there are probably more, this would help ID/confirm some of the further stations. Another 10 to 20 slots would probably do it.

Cheers,

AS
 

thebaldgeek

thebaldgeek
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SoCal
No trouble at all. I just added another 20 slots.

EDIT: Hmm, I see some aircraft sneaking into the ground station list... will take a look whats happening there.
 
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AirScan

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Great, thanks.

Sorry to be a pest, but having the "(Ground Station)" displayed beside the number ID is kinda redundant and takes up space. Any chance it could just display the hex number only ? It would clean up the look of it.

And since you made the change aircraft are popping up on it now for some reason ?
 
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