WinRadio G-31 Excalibur And The WinRadio "Advanced Digital Suite" ?

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BOBRR

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Hello,

Have a WinRadio G-31 Excalibur.

Have been looking at adding their Advanced Digital Suite to it.

a. Anyone using a G-31 with this digital add-on Suite ?

Thoughts ? (software reasonably up to date ?)
"Worth" the $ ?
Caveats, limitations, etc. ?

b. The G-31 goes up to 50 MHz.
Acars is around 130 MHz if I remember right.

This point isn't discussed in their write-ups.

So, how can a G-31 with their Advanced Digital Suite receive Acars (which I would really like to do)
Can it ?

Thanks,
Bob
 

Markb

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Hi Bob.
I don't have an Excalibur, so I can't speak to your first question. With regard to your second question, they are referring to HFDL. Not sure If you are familiar with it or not. Here's a quote from the Radioreference Wiki:

"Digital and Other Modes:
HFDL, otherwise known as High Frequency Data Link, or HF ACARS, is now used extensively by many commercial airlines. There is a whole sub-culture of people that use various software packages to copy this mode and track flights which can be found on the Utility DXers Forum group. This is also the place to be for logs of stations calling MWARA stations. Also see the ACARS VDL2 reflector on groups.io, which covers HFDL as a sub-group"

Mark
 

BOBRR

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Hi,

Thanks.

I forgot all about the HF Acars. That old age problem again.

Regards, stay well,
Bob
 

ka3jjz

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It's rather unlikely they are talking about HFDL since it wasn't around in wide use when this app first came out. More likely they were are talking about good old plain jane ACARS

That being said, FAX and NAVTEX are very widely used; if you are interested in weather charts or getting marine bulletins these 2 modes will be for you. NAVTEX can be challenging to get on their low band frequencies (490 and 518 Khz) because most folks that are too close to an urban area would have issues with MW overloading. There are 6 or so frequencies on HF that are reserved for this service.

Schedules change, of course, but Bill Hepburn's site is still very good for NAVTEX, and NOAA publishes a huge FAX guide which is updated fairly frequently. See the links here for more; Bill's sites are listed in the Websites section of...


Mike
 

BOBRR

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Hello all,

Great references and info.
Much appreciated.

Will delve in to it all today.

Great hobby for me, as there is always something new to learn.
Latest I'm trying to get a handle on is propagation theory,

Have a G-31 Excalibur which I use with WinRadio software.
A really fine product.

Also have a SDRPlay RSPdx which I use mainly for the higher free's.
Scantenna in the attic.
Use it with SDRConsole; incredible program.

Stay safely,
Bob
 

JerryX

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PC-HFDL is a nice program for monitoring HFDL, and it even interfaces to mapping programs to plot the progress of flights. It's not free, but at $35 it's quite inexpensive.

I monitor Navtex on 518 kHz nearly every night here on the Pacific Coast, and usually hear six stations. Give it a try. For software, I recommend YaND.
 

ka3jjz

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There are even 2 reflectors devoted, respectively to HFDL (as a subgroup) as NAVTEX DXing. Both seem to be fairly busy places - that NAVTEX group seems to be really hot with traffic. If you want to get into this more, I would check these out, along with the UDXF of course.

As a side note, any software that can decode SITOR-B can handle NAVTEX very easily. They are nearly identical protocols.



Mike
 
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