AirNav Radar Box
Not flight simulator related, but certainly aviation related. Some of you may know me from my interest in ACARS - I also run the ACARS Online web site. For those who’ve not heard of this before, you can simply plug your airband radio into the soundcard of your computer, fire up one of the free (such as ACARSD) or commercial (such as AirNav) decoding applications, tune in to the correct frequency and you’ll start seeing messages coming in from aircraft showing such things as position of aircraft, maintenance messages etc. There’s an enormous worldwide interest in it and in fact I run a Yahoo ACARS group with over 700 members.
AirNav has recently released their RadarBox, which picks up from where ACARS leaves off. The description on their site sums it up pretty well:
AirNav RadarBox is the closest you can be to real world aviation without leaving your chair thanks to next generation Radar decoding. By decoding ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast) radar signals, you will be able to see on your computer what real Air Traffic Controllers see on their screens in Real-Time. Flight number, aircraft type, altitude, heading, speed are all updated each second. Included is the award winning software interface developed by the world’s leader in flight tracking and monitoring solutions, AirNav Systems.
If you’re interested in real world aviation, there’s nothing to beat this setup right now.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Mark, that sounds interesting, I’d like to give it a go when I get time enough to check it out. I have a cheapo Maycom FR100 scanner which I can probably connect to the line-in jack of my sound card. Do I need any other hardware? I did check out the websites you link to but they need some serious browsing time to make sense of
Hi PieEater. It’s not as complicated as it looks
Your radio should be okay. Tune in to 131.725 and see if you can hear some data bursts - it’ll sound a bit like when you phone a fax machine, but in very short bursts. If you get that, a simple audio lead between the radio and the line-in on your soundcard and one of the software decoders should be enough. You have to play around with the volume a little to get it just right, but once you’ve got the right level you can generally leave it.
Mark
Hi Mark, I’ve tuned to 131.725 and very infrequently (5-6 minutes) I get short (1/2 second) bursts of activity, does this sound like I should pursue setting it up on my PC? At some point within the next 12 months I want to get a better scanner to tune into the Red Arrows displays so maybe then would be a better time to look into ACARS ?!?
Hi PieEater. I’d expect you get a data burst every few seconds. You do need a fairly good aerial, though. Do you have an external one? It’ll make an enormous difference.
Mark
Hi Mark, No I don’t have an external antenna, I bought a Moonraker Supergainer replacement for my scanner’s whip antenna but that doesn’t seem to have made a huge difference. I was looking at the Moonraker SWP2000 portable antenna as it would sit well on the velux window in my study and I could also stick it on the car’s roof if I was out at a show. Is it worth the money, perhaps in conjunction with a MRP2000-MK2 pre-amp? I don’t really want to have an external antenna if I can help it.
I would avoid a pre-amp. My experience is that, although it does amplify the signal, it also amplifies the noise and hence makes it more difficult to decode.
If the external aerial is not possible, something in the loft would be second best if you can do that.
Mark
Thanks Mark, I’ll not bother with a pre-amp. I’ll look at fitting something in the loft at some point possibly when I upgrade my scanner. I’ll be contacting you again for some advice when the time comes
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