Things have been a little slow here so thought I'd post something a
bit out of the ordinary and get some discussion going about what we
are all doing to spend time during the Covid crisis.

To set the stage, I've had a long time interest in electronics, ham
radio, short wave radio reception, etc., ever since I was a kid. Those
interests eventually morphed into a career of programming, designing
and managing computer systems, so the skills I learned early on served
me well. About 5 years ago I started another hobby which combined my
interest in boats and boating with my interest in electronics and
computing. I set up a receiving station for the AIS position report
transmissions that all large boats transmit, as well as many smaller
ones. My equipment decodes position reports and boat data, logs it to
my chart plotting software, and forwards it to a web site called
www.marinetraffic.com. Anyone can log onto that site and see the
position of boats all over the world thanks to a network of volunteers
like myself who share their data via the internet.

Recently I learned that there is a similar network of hobbyists who
track the position of aircraft by decoding what is called their ADS-B
transponder data. We live near two fairly active airports, and have a
steady stream of planes and hellicopters flying around so I thought it
would be cool to know more about them. Thanks to some recent advances
in electronics it is now possible to buy a minature USB device which
not only receives radio signals but decodes their data and makes it
available for processing on your PC. All that, with an antenna, for
about $30 or so on Amazon. Now when I hear an airplane fly over, with
a few mouse clicks, I can get all of their flight data and plot the
position of the plane on a chart. With a few more clicks the tail
number, registration data and a picture of the plane is displayed.
From there you can see their flight plan if any, know where they came
from, and where they are going.

I have quickly learned that there is a lot more going on up there than
I'd ever realized. We've got a huge number of private jets zooming
around, lots of small aircraft, flight school planes practicing,
mosquito control hellicopters spraying, sheriff's hellicopters
patrolling, med evac aircraft doing their thing, and the usual number
of commercial flights coming and going. It can be a bit addictive to
watch all of this going on. If you're a real junky you can also
monitor control tower transmissions on various web sites.

https://www.amazon.com/FlightAware-FA-PROSTICKPLUS-1-Receiver-Built-Filter/dp/B01M7REJJW

https://discussions.flightaware.com/t/how-to-install-pro-stick-dvb-t-on-windows/25070/2

https://www.liveatc.net/

--
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
https://www.avg.com