Free ACARS Decoder and More...
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jlh
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- Oct 1, 2004
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in your acars working folder, open airports.csv with wordpad, add the airports and coords for the ones you want, like - KGSO 36.08 -79.95 Greensboro,NC - save this file, start acarsd, choose load airports, load map. they will appear. there are plenty of places on the web to get airport coordinates files for the world.
W4UVV
Member
I'll try it
Ok...I glanced at the airport file and thought I saw the DC airports airports listed. The cities display on my card.gif file but since there were no overlay graphic symbols for them I assumed it wasn't working. I'll change the csv file to ensure the airports I want display. Tnx.
Ok...I glanced at the airport file and thought I saw the DC airports airports listed. The cities display on my card.gif file but since there were no overlay graphic symbols for them I assumed it wasn't working. I'll change the csv file to ensure the airports I want display. Tnx.
W4UVV said:
I found that if you enter the airport info into the servers.cvs then when you load the map, it shows the airports as little dots. I don't get labels on the airports, so I may be missing a field or that functionality is not present with the way the servers.cvs file is read.
Here is an example of how mine is formatted
KATL US 24/7 33.636 -84.428 KATL
fields seem to be NAME<TAB>COUNTRY<TAB>HOURS<TAB>LAT<TAB>LON<TAB>NAME
Hope this helps.
Rod
Atlanta
W4UVV
Member
Finally airports file display success
Ok. Tnx. to you Rod and jlh in NC I finally got my airports file entries to display on my card.gif map file. The airport displays are off slightly which I can correct by slight lat/lon adjustments in the csv file. I finally figured out what I was doing wrong. First, I previously glanced through the airports.txt file and saw some US airports. I thought this file was used by the program but now I suspect it soley is an information file. Next I checked the csv file and many world airports were listed but no US airports. That explains why no large regional area airports displayed. I fixed that file first by deleting about 2,000 world airports and entering 11 US airports of interest that would display on my map. They do display in a pretty yellow circle with the ICAO designator. I tried various formats in the csv file to get the airport name also to display and finally concluded that the airport name again soley is for information purposes as the airport ICAO identifier typically is located close to the map text graphic of the city name. If your card.gif file does not have any airport city names then that could be a problem attempting to relate the ICAO airport label displays to the appropriate cities.
rjones said:
Ok. Tnx. to you Rod and jlh in NC I finally got my airports file entries to display on my card.gif map file. The airport displays are off slightly which I can correct by slight lat/lon adjustments in the csv file. I finally figured out what I was doing wrong. First, I previously glanced through the airports.txt file and saw some US airports. I thought this file was used by the program but now I suspect it soley is an information file. Next I checked the csv file and many world airports were listed but no US airports. That explains why no large regional area airports displayed. I fixed that file first by deleting about 2,000 world airports and entering 11 US airports of interest that would display on my map. They do display in a pretty yellow circle with the ICAO designator. I tried various formats in the csv file to get the airport name also to display and finally concluded that the airport name again soley is for information purposes as the airport ICAO identifier typically is located close to the map text graphic of the city name. If your card.gif file does not have any airport city names then that could be a problem attempting to relate the ICAO airport label displays to the appropriate cities.
W4UVV
Member
A really oversimplified disorganized response
Kevin, first I do not possess an in depth knowledge of ACARS. My monitoring interest is at a basic level. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will post a more definitive organized response to you. I use the acarsd program to receive selected AM ACARS radio transmissions in the 129-131 mhz. and 136-137 mhz. range inputing the scanner/receiver audio as line input to my computer's sound card. I am fortunate in having pre-amped antennas tower mounted and can receive multiple ACARS ground wave transmissions at my location in central Virginia.
The "acarsd" program has two significant features of interest to me. First, it provides a real time display of acars radio data from the particular ACARS frequency I am monitoring. The program has other features that include displaying a jpg of a particular aircraft from various databases if it gets an acars message "hit" on that aircraft's tail number. I unselected that option as I had no interest in seeing pictures of aircraft display. I also did not select another program feature that allows the acarsd software to function as a server interfacing to other internet databases.
The second significant feature of interest to me is the one that displays a screen graphic symbol of a particular aircraft that via acars automatically provides a position report of its latitude and longitude on the user created gif file map(card.gif) of my geographical area of interest. When the mouse cursor highlights the graphic symbol limited text information pertaining to the aircraft displays. If subsequent multiple position reports occur from the same aircraft and it still is in my map's geographical display area, by highlighting that graphic symbol the originating airport and destination airport are shown and a dotted line representing the flight path between the position report "hits" displays. I created my "card.gif" file using mapping software and screen captured what I wanted and then edited the image. It took me many attempts trying different mapping software to finally get what I wanted.
Another program feature of interest to me is via a user defined "airport.csv" file selected entries of their locations using latitude and longitude information display.
In my opinion the acarsd program contains little helpful user setup information for these two features. The posts from me are requests for help in creating a regional geographic map(i.e. "card.gif") from someone who has been successful creating one. The second request for help was getting my selected airports to display on the map (card.gif). If working properly a small yellow circle displays with the ICAO designator beneath it. Again, in my opinion if the program had an in depth user help file or FAQ file discussing these two aforementioned program features, I don't think you would see so many posts requesting help.
Like anything else, if you know how to do something it is easy. It's the learning curve of getting there the first time that sometimes is the hardest. The "acarsd" software decoder is discussed in the June, 2006 Monitoring Times magazine article. So far this free program's main attraction appears to be the aircraft map plotting position feature for those aircraft that provide position reports. It is available for downloading at <www.acarsd.org>.
I hope this oversimplified disorganized response provides you helpful information from my perspective and use of the software. Now that I know the necessary actions required to make the two program graphic displays work to my satisfaction in one program, I can do a zillion of them. Knowledge is power.
KEVPRO95 said:
Kevin, first I do not possess an in depth knowledge of ACARS. My monitoring interest is at a basic level. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will post a more definitive organized response to you. I use the acarsd program to receive selected AM ACARS radio transmissions in the 129-131 mhz. and 136-137 mhz. range inputing the scanner/receiver audio as line input to my computer's sound card. I am fortunate in having pre-amped antennas tower mounted and can receive multiple ACARS ground wave transmissions at my location in central Virginia.
The "acarsd" program has two significant features of interest to me. First, it provides a real time display of acars radio data from the particular ACARS frequency I am monitoring. The program has other features that include displaying a jpg of a particular aircraft from various databases if it gets an acars message "hit" on that aircraft's tail number. I unselected that option as I had no interest in seeing pictures of aircraft display. I also did not select another program feature that allows the acarsd software to function as a server interfacing to other internet databases.
The second significant feature of interest to me is the one that displays a screen graphic symbol of a particular aircraft that via acars automatically provides a position report of its latitude and longitude on the user created gif file map(card.gif) of my geographical area of interest. When the mouse cursor highlights the graphic symbol limited text information pertaining to the aircraft displays. If subsequent multiple position reports occur from the same aircraft and it still is in my map's geographical display area, by highlighting that graphic symbol the originating airport and destination airport are shown and a dotted line representing the flight path between the position report "hits" displays. I created my "card.gif" file using mapping software and screen captured what I wanted and then edited the image. It took me many attempts trying different mapping software to finally get what I wanted.
Another program feature of interest to me is via a user defined "airport.csv" file selected entries of their locations using latitude and longitude information display.
In my opinion the acarsd program contains little helpful user setup information for these two features. The posts from me are requests for help in creating a regional geographic map(i.e. "card.gif") from someone who has been successful creating one. The second request for help was getting my selected airports to display on the map (card.gif). If working properly a small yellow circle displays with the ICAO designator beneath it. Again, in my opinion if the program had an in depth user help file or FAQ file discussing these two aforementioned program features, I don't think you would see so many posts requesting help.
Like anything else, if you know how to do something it is easy. It's the learning curve of getting there the first time that sometimes is the hardest. The "acarsd" software decoder is discussed in the June, 2006 Monitoring Times magazine article. So far this free program's main attraction appears to be the aircraft map plotting position feature for those aircraft that provide position reports. It is available for downloading at <www.acarsd.org>.
I hope this oversimplified disorganized response provides you helpful information from my perspective and use of the software. Now that I know the necessary actions required to make the two program graphic displays work to my satisfaction in one program, I can do a zillion of them. Knowledge is power.
dvendt
Member
Acarsd
Does this or any other decoder work on win. 8.1? I can't get any decoders to run. Help please
Does this or any other decoder work on win. 8.1? I can't get any decoders to run. Help please
ka3jjz
Wiki Admin Emeritus
Supposedly MultiPSK handles ACARS, and there's a Yahoo group for support...
MultiPSK home page
MultiPSK Yahoo support group
Be sure to download the maps.zip file about 2/3 of the way down the page - looks like that's supposed to be used for ACARS too
Mike
MultiPSK home page
MultiPSK Yahoo support group
Be sure to download the maps.zip file about 2/3 of the way down the page - looks like that's supposed to be used for ACARS too
Mike
ka3jjz
Wiki Admin Emeritus
And here are a few YouTube videos on the subject...
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=multipsk+acars
Mike
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=multipsk+acars
Mike
dvendt
Member
ACARS
You now have to pay $45 to get acars. More then I'm willing to pay. If I had a loaded ham shach it may be worth it but not for just acars,
You now have to pay $45 to get acars. More then I'm willing to pay. If I had a loaded ham shach it may be worth it but not for just acars,
dvendt
Member
Paneplotter is only free for 21 days then it'll cost ya. I don't mean to sound cheap but I've been out of work for 3 months due to back surgery. I barely have enough to put bread on the table. and my wife only works part time.
ACARSD will work on win 8. So will KG-ACARS worldwide edition. The setup of acarsd isn't simple but not hard if you read the documentation. Also setting up the mixer in system sounds helps if decodes are garbled. click disable sound effects.
There is also a free linux decoder called ARCARSdec but requires some knowledge on compiling from source and going through a small dependency hell. Which can be overcome by compiling those by source. Or searching for the packages that contain the needed dependencies and d/ling from the software repo's. Can be ran with Xastir a APRS program for mapping.
With a quick search it looks like they have updated acarsdec to 3.0. Will have to give it a whirl.
There is also a free linux decoder called ARCARSdec but requires some knowledge on compiling from source and going through a small dependency hell. Which can be overcome by compiling those by source. Or searching for the packages that contain the needed dependencies and d/ling from the software repo's. Can be ran with Xastir a APRS program for mapping.
With a quick search it looks like they have updated acarsdec to 3.0. Will have to give it a whirl.
dvendt
Member
Thanks for the info. I'll give it a whirl again.
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