I have monitored public safety, aviation and some amateur radio for over 30 years. How does one go about starting into this area of monitoring?
thanks for the help!
thanks for the help!
Where to start?
- Thread starter firefigherj
- Start date
thebaldgeek
thebaldgeek
Your years of experience puts you way out in front in the RF and antenna mob, so will skip all that....
Where to start depends on if you are serious about the satcom aspect or you want local VHF voice or local ACARS.
If you are already listening to local airband voice, then you have a bit of an idea of what satcom voice calls are going to be like. Do note that the easiest satcom is L-Band and that is the ground dispatch side of the call only. To get the cockpit side you will need a 6+ foot (1.2m) satellite dish with tracking and GPSDO stabilized LO. (Goes without saying that if you want both sides of the call, you will need both satcom antenna setups).
Also note that voice calls are a massive no-no from a privacy aspect. That's why you don't find any websites that have the audio for public consumption.
Also note that you will get any and all calls mixed together, that is to say, both civil and military. There are ways to filter them, but you will need quite a bit of local software and the community airframes database to filter the ICAO and sort civ from mil on your local hard drive.
If you are just interested in reading satcom ACARS, then we (my website and Kevin's) already have a bunch of L-Band (and C-Band) feeds to either site, so take a look at them and read what you will get. Do note that you will get EXACTLY the same ACARS messages both our sites show. We don't filter anything, so you will see the exact same thing, but yours will be a firehose and unsearchable (ie, unreadable) unless you add some sort of software database / file handling on your PC. A lot of folks think they will get something different and have been disappointed to find that the ACARS come in so fast that they cant be read.
As for your exact question of how to get started, both my GitHub and Kevin's GitHub have full satcom build BOMs and software how-tos.
Ask any questions in this thread or do a search, as L-Band has been well covered and many folks can jump in and help out.
Where to start depends on if you are serious about the satcom aspect or you want local VHF voice or local ACARS.
If you are already listening to local airband voice, then you have a bit of an idea of what satcom voice calls are going to be like. Do note that the easiest satcom is L-Band and that is the ground dispatch side of the call only. To get the cockpit side you will need a 6+ foot (1.2m) satellite dish with tracking and GPSDO stabilized LO. (Goes without saying that if you want both sides of the call, you will need both satcom antenna setups).
Also note that voice calls are a massive no-no from a privacy aspect. That's why you don't find any websites that have the audio for public consumption.
Also note that you will get any and all calls mixed together, that is to say, both civil and military. There are ways to filter them, but you will need quite a bit of local software and the community airframes database to filter the ICAO and sort civ from mil on your local hard drive.
If you are just interested in reading satcom ACARS, then we (my website and Kevin's) already have a bunch of L-Band (and C-Band) feeds to either site, so take a look at them and read what you will get. Do note that you will get EXACTLY the same ACARS messages both our sites show. We don't filter anything, so you will see the exact same thing, but yours will be a firehose and unsearchable (ie, unreadable) unless you add some sort of software database / file handling on your PC. A lot of folks think they will get something different and have been disappointed to find that the ACARS come in so fast that they cant be read.
As for your exact question of how to get started, both my GitHub and Kevin's GitHub have full satcom build BOMs and software how-tos.
Ask any questions in this thread or do a search, as L-Band has been well covered and many folks can jump in and help out.
That is exactly the response I was looking for , i had no idea where to start. Thank you!!
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