ACARS Help

[RainbowSix]

Hi all,

I am running PDW V1.10 to monitor ACARS through my sound card mic or line input.
I have 4 active frequencies in the Toronto,Ontario,Canada area.

-131.5500
-129.1250
-130.4500
-131.4750

I am using a Pro-43 for monitoring, but I am not decoding anything?????

I am using a male to male cable from the sound card line or mic input - the scanner earphone jack.

I used to monitor ACARS with a different scanner & laptop about 2 yrs ago the same way and it worked fine.

What am I doing wrong, what settings do I need to setupin the software or the laptop to monitor ACARS?

My laptop is a ACERNOTE Light, Windows 95, Pentium 2, 16.0MB RAM.

Note-I can decode pocsag & M-Trunker no problem with my level 2 decoder cable.

Thank you in advance

 

[ka3jjz]

There are several possibilites here, and many of these are documented on the Recording Software wiki (simply because they happen to be a common problem)...so here goes...

a. Are you hearing anything coming thru the laptop speakers (if it has them)? If not, you need to get into the master volume controls (double click on the volume icon in your system tray) and see if the line or mic input has been muted; some of them even say 'select' - it all depends on what software your laptop is running the soundcard. Punch up a local NOAA or ATIS frequency.

b. Many laptops need an attenuating patch cord, because the input from the earphone jack of most scanners - even an oldie but a goodie like the PRO-43 - might well be too much. If the sound is too loud, is distorted or has a loud hum, this might well be the problem. Some mic inputs have a 20db boost setting (usually under 'advanced' in the master volume panel) and this too can cause hum.

c. As documented on the ACARS wiki, you need to keep the squelch OFF when monitoring ACARS. There's a brief sync signal that's sent with each burst; no sync, no decoding.

d. I seem to remember that PDW has some issues with ACARS decoding; I know I could never get it to work, and I'm using a much newer version. I know acarsd will run under Win95, but with that small memory....of that, I'm not entirely sure. Just for the hey of it, try running PDW with the 2 level decoder being fed by the earphone jack (make sure you select that port in the setup routines). If it starts to work, you know that the line or mic in is probably been muted or not selected.

That's all I can think of at the moment. 73s Mike

 

[kd5dga]

Try a program called ACARSD. Its a great windows and Lynix program for decoding acars messages. Best part it is free. PDW only really works good for recieving paging formats.

 

[jlh]

another vote for acarsd, there is nothing better

 

[Audiodave1]

Ditto on Acarsd.

I run it on a dedicated PII 400M machine w/64M of memory.

2 radios to the stereo soundcard input....log 2500-3000 flts a day.

Set decoder passes to 7

Squelch wide open, max reading of 15 on the volume indicator in the software.

Too much level causes the sound buffers to over run and freezes the program.

If you get the program let me know if you want my database.

The ACARSD yahoo group is very active also.

Dave

 

[jlh]

Added a screenshot of acarsd running on my laptop.