Black Cat ACARS and R8600

[jazzboypro]

Hello all,
I just installed the latest version of Black Cat ACARS on my laptop. I connected my R8600 on a USB port on said laptop. I have set the frequency in Black Cat and on the radio to 129.125 MHz and the radio is set to AM. I can hear signal bursts on the radio and they also appear on the Black Cat signal display so i am confident that the signal is fed to the software. I checked on google and the signals i am hearing are really ACARS signals. The problem is that when i hear those signals there is no text appearing in black cat as if nothing was being decoded. I am using a trial version of black cat so i have not entered any registration key. Apart from selecting the sound input and the frequency there does not seem to a lot to configure in black cat. Am I doing something wrong ?

Many thanks
73
VA2FCS

 

[ka3jjz]

Did you try leaving your squelch open? ACARS has a short digital sync signal at the beginning of the transmission; if it doesn't hear it, you will get no decodes.

Many radios squelch doesn't open up fast enough to hear the sync tone.

Mike

 

[jazzboypro]

Yes the squelch is fully open (set to 0)

 

[morfis]

Not exactlty busy at my location at this time but just downloaded Chris's software to try it as I could do so with the same receiver
(won't replace acarsdeco which being multichannel does away with all messing about with virtual cables and multiple decoder instances)

Receiver R8600 and audio piped through it's USB sound device
UK primary freq, AM, filter1, AGC-M, Squelch set
Current release version of software unzipped, sound device set, gain turned to 3/4 (for no reason other than that it seems odd to be at 100% by default)
100% decode on all messages past the squelch threshold (ie. it opens quickly enough)

With the squelch at 0 no more messages decoded but some burried in the noise (which are being decoded by acarsdeco) are not being decoded.

Didn't have to do anything special to make it work....which unfortunately doesn't help you assuming you do have ACARS. Is that frequency the busiest to you locally?

 

[jazzboypro]

Thanks for trying on your R8600. I dit set my AGC to medium and selected filter 1. Squelch still fully open and RF gain to max. For some reason i started to messages appearing but as you can see on the picture it's just random letters/numbers/symbols.

 

[ka3jjz]

How are you feeding the audio? Via the 8600's soundcard, or a patch from a line in or headphones?

If it's from a headphone jack, don't make it too loud. Most decoders will not work well with audio that's too loud - it overdrives them....Mike

 

[jazzboypro]

All i have is a USB cable from the back of the radio to a USB port on the laptop. I've tried different input level settings but it does not solve my problem all i get is random characters. Also a lot of the signals i hear do not generate a message. In the sofware window, Good is at 13 and bad is at 3.

P.Amp, Att, IP+ are all off
NB,NR =On
AGC=Medium
Notch= MN Wide

The signals seem to be generating messages very randomly.

 

[ka3jjz]

Looking at the back of the 8600

Icom R8600 Rear Panel

The USB B port carries demodulated AF (huh?), which might not be what you want. I suspect there's a menu somewhere that you need to configure. There's also an AF / IF jack with that same demodulated audio; again, that's likely a configuration menu item, I'm sure. As it's a fixed level, it might work better - no chance of overdriving it....

Probably the easiest way to go is from the External speaker jack on the back. Nice raw audio; you would need a USB soundcard to take that into your laptop. Don't overdrive it otherwise all you will get is junk

Mike

 

[jazzboypro]

@ka3jjz looking at your link, the USB port i'm using is the one labeled 15. It's the same port and the same cable that i use for decoding FT8 with wsjtx. FT8 decoding works well on most bands. The soundcard interface is builtin the R8600 so i assume it should work.

 

[ka3jjz]

Are you leaving the mode as AM? That too is needed for ACARS....Mike

 

[jazzboypro]

Yes the mode is set to AM. The signals register at between S3 and S5 on the radio's meter sometimes it's S9+. the USB output is set to AF

 

[morfis]

All i have is a USB cable from the back of the radio to a USB port on the laptop. I've tried different input level settings but it does not solve my problem all i get is random characters. Also a lot of the signals i hear do not generate a message. In the sofware window, Good is at 13 and bad is at 3.

P.Amp, Att, IP+ are all off
NB,NR =On
AGC=Medium
Notch= MN Wide

The signals seem to be generating messages very randomly.

For reference:
USB Rear
Output select AF
AF Output level 50%
AS Squelch Off

Functions - P.AMP etc all OFF (you don't generally want sound modifiers like NB and NR for decoding apps)

Unless you can see some acual ACARS messages decoded I wouldn't trust the displayed % good messages as your screenshot shows nothing decoded as ACARS.

Any chance you can record some of the data and upload it to wetransfer/vocaroo so I can feed it into the software here?

Mike - demodulated audio via the radio soundcard is exactly what is needed. Chris's software uses demodulated audio the same as the other standard ACARS decoders from the past 35 years. It won't work with IF

 

[ka3jjz]

But why 'demodulated'- or is that vs. tapping a detector (in this case, since it's AM involved here)? I've run ACARSD and another ACARS decoder just tapping the speaker out of a scanner and it works. But that was in the days on Win7....

Typical Japanese translations....Mike

 

[morfis]

But why 'demodulated'- or is that vs. tapping a detector (in this case, since it's AM involved here)? I've run ACARSD and another ACARS decoder just tapping the speaker out of a scanner and it works. But that was in the days on Win7....

Typical Japanese translations....Mike

Yes...demodulated as in AM (as all of yours were) rather than raw IF which you could then use in an external demodulator (eg for DRM)

...or at least that's how I understand it (if I do indeed undersatnd it!)

 

[n2pqq]

Turn off NR

 

[jazzboypro]

For reference:
USB Rear
Output select AF
AF Output level 50%
AS Squelch Off

Functions - P.AMP etc all OFF (you don't generally want sound modifiers like NB and NR for decoding apps)

Unless you can see some acual ACARS messages decoded I wouldn't trust the displayed % good messages as your screenshot shows nothing decoded as ACARS.

Any chance you can record some of the data and upload it to wetransfer/vocaroo so I can feed it into the software here?

Mike - demodulated audio via the radio soundcard is exactly what is needed. Chris's software uses demodulated audio the same as the other standard ACARS decoders from the past 35 years. It won't work with IF

It appears that you found my problem. After turning all functions to off i started getting messages that make sense as you can see in the picture.




While I'm here is there a place that explains what all those numbers means ? for instance on the first message what does C-FIVQ and S-93 mean ? I'm pretty sure that AC0844 is an Air Canada flight number.

Many thanks

 

[morfis]

While I'm here is there a place that explains what all those numbers means ? for instance on the first message what does C-FIVQ and S-93 mean ? I'm pretty sure that AC0844 is an Air Canada flight number.

mmmmm, C-FIVQ is the tail number of the aircraft (it's padded to the left with "." to make seven characters). Following that is the two character message label (not all of the characters are printable) - the download page shows that the software does have a basic description of these as shown on the message type display (but different airlines do use them slightly differently and the software doesn't appear to take that into account)
S93A is a message number and following that is an Air Canada flight number

It's another reason to use other software really. Several of the decoders will turn the messages into more human readable English

 

[jazzboypro]

mmmmm, C-FIVQ is the tail number of the aircraft (it's padded to the left with "." to make seven characters). Following that is the two character message label (not all of the characters are printable) - the download page shows that the software does have a basic description of these as shown on the message type display (but different airlines do use them slightly differently and the software doesn't appear to take that into account)
S93A is a message number and following that is an Air Canada flight number

It's another reason to use other software really. Several of the decoders will turn the messages into more human readable English

Any suggestion on a better software ?

 

[morfis]

Any suggestion on a better software ?

It's at this point that Mike usually gives out links to a radioreference page but I only use the buletin board part of RR.


Choice of software will depend on many things...I like what Chris has done with the multitab decoder but messing with multiple VACs etc? Why bother when it's so easy to do far more without that old mither?
So...which OS do you want to use...how many frequencies do you want to decode, what do you want to use as a receiver ( agrands worth of R8600 is a pecular choice to leave sat on a single frequency), what do you want to do with the information ? etc

I use a raspberry pi to decode all the European ACARS frequencies and all the VDL2 (newer system which has largely replaced legacy ACARS) frequencies. It has three nooelec rtl devices as the receivers.
For legacy ACARS (very little traffic these days): acarsdec (GitHub - szpajder/acarsdec: ACARS SDR decoder)
For VDL2: dumpvdl2 (GitHub - szpajder/dumpvdl2: VDL Mode 2 message decoder and protocol analyzer)
This pi also runs another rtl device and server so I can monitor local airband audio

I have another raspberry pi for ADS-B. On that I use dump1090-FA but as a custom install rather than part of a flightaware image
A third pi is running dumpHFDL (think ACARS on shortwave) using an Airspy R2 (purely because it has a wider bandwidth and I can then monitor more frequencies simultaneously)

A windows microPC runs JAERO to capture INMARSAT classic aero data (think ACARS on satelite)

It's easy to dip in and out and try different things using a pi and an rtl device....handful of peanuts not a grand

I have deleiberately not mentioned what happens to all that data and how it's used....thats far more complex a subject.

Many of the linux programs above can be compiled for windows and there are many other options too. Macos is less-well supported (as is the case for it and most radio-related software).

There's a mailing list/bulletin board (isn;'t there always?):

main groups.io Group

A Group for those interested in ACARS / VDL2 / JAERO. HFDL is discussed in a sub-group. Mainly to exchange ideas and help members to get the best results. Not meant to discuss everyone's 'catch of the day'. Those will find a larger audience in the https://groups.io/g/UDXF.

acars-vdl2.groups.io

which covers ACARS/VDL2/HFVDL/JAERO

Worth hopping on there. Another good source of info on setups is the discussion board of Flightaware as they are very open about their system and discussion on other related areas is welcomed rather than stamped on.

This is just kind of scratching the surface. There's a lot of choices these days and most of the 'free' options are far better than the older paid ones. A lot can be done with little financial outlay but I would suggest going down the linux route using raspberry pi for flexability.

 

[jazzboypro]

It's at this point that Mike usually gives out links to a radioreference page but I only use the buletin board part of RR.


Choice of software will depend on many things...I like what Chris has done with the multitab decoder but messing with multiple VACs etc? Why bother when it's so easy to do far more without that old mither?
So...which OS do you want to use...how many frequencies do you want to decode, what do you want to use as a receiver ( agrands worth of R8600 is a pecular choice to leave sat on a single frequency), what do you want to do with the information ? etc

I use a raspberry pi to decode all the European ACARS frequencies and all the VDL2 (newer system which has largely replaced legacy ACARS) frequencies. It has three nooelec rtl devices as the receivers.
For legacy ACARS (very little traffic these days): acarsdec (GitHub - szpajder/acarsdec: ACARS SDR decoder)
For VDL2: dumpvdl2 (GitHub - szpajder/dumpvdl2: VDL Mode 2 message decoder and protocol analyzer)
This pi also runs another rtl device and server so I can monitor local airband audio

I have another raspberry pi for ADS-B. On that I use dump1090-FA but as a custom install rather than part of a flightaware image
A third pi is running dumpHFDL (think ACARS on shortwave) using an Airspy R2 (purely because it has a wider bandwidth and I can then monitor more frequencies simultaneously)

A windows microPC runs JAERO to capture INMARSAT classic aero data (think ACARS on satelite)

It's easy to dip in and out and try different things using a pi and an rtl device....handful of peanuts not a grand

I have deleiberately not mentioned what happens to all that data and how it's used....thats far more complex a subject.

Many of the linux programs above can be compiled for windows and there are many other options too. Macos is less-well supported (as is the case for it and most radio-related software).

There's a mailing list/bulletin board (isn;'t there always?):

main groups.io Group

A Group for those interested in ACARS / VDL2 / JAERO. HFDL is discussed in a sub-group. Mainly to exchange ideas and help members to get the best results. Not meant to discuss everyone's 'catch of the day'. Those will find a larger audience in the https://groups.io/g/UDXF.

acars-vdl2.groups.io

which covers ACARS/VDL2/HFVDL/JAERO

Worth hopping on there. Another good source of info on setups is the discussion board of Flightaware as they are very open about their system and discussion on other related areas is welcomed rather than stamped on.

This is just kind of scratching the surface. There's a lot of choices these days and most of the 'free' options are far better than the older paid ones. A lot can be done with little financial outlay but I would suggest going down the linux route using raspberry pi for flexability.

Well, for now i would like to use what i already have. The receivers will be my R8600 and/or RSPDUO. The software would need to run on a Windows 10/11 laptop. As for want i want to do with the data i can't answer that because i have no clue about what can de done with it. I know i don't want to record any of it to listen at a later date. I guess for now i just want a software that will display the information in a readable format. At the moment i would like to avoid using other Dongle/RDR. Avoiding using VAC's would be nice.