MSP Helicopter Flight Following

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maus92

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Has anyone ever been able to successfully receive and decode the location data that MSP helos transmit?

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ka3jjz

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Yes, I'm told it is (was? has it changed?) a simple 1200 baud ASCII signal that sends out nothing more than a series of geographic coordinates. There are a great many packages out there that could potentially decode this. The Utility Monitoring Central link on our Utility wiki will give you a good selection, if you're interested. Likely as not, since it's so low-speed, that a discriminator tap would not be needed 73 Mike
 

maus92

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Just found this on MIEMMS website:

Flight Following System

A flight following system in SYSCOM provides visual awareness of the status and location of all MSP helicopters. The system utilizes the FAA’s newest tracking system known as Automatic Dependant Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B). MIEMSS has partnered with the FAA to increase the coverage area of ADS-B by utilizing the state’s tower sites and transport systems.

This is basically bad news....

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ka3jjz

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Yeah, I guess you can't always get what you want (with apologies to Mick Jagger...) Thanx for that anyway - it's interesting nonetheless

73 Mike
 

rdale

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It's not that bad - just get something that receives ADS-B.
 

maus92

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Feel free to suggest the equipment, but remember it's not like ACARS. In the future, services like flightaware might be able to stream ads-b based info to web browsers like they currently do with ifr radar traffic, but as it stands at the moment, the FAA is only releasing its ads-b flight tracking software to those who need it.

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