Virtual Radar South West

[jeallen01]

Chris

Many thanks! I'll think about that (but, TBH, it may not happen in the short term, much as I would it like to - see some of my other posts on this, and on other photo/aviation, forums, and there are many other areas like the CCTV issue and the local U3A where I will be helping to run digital photo group).

 

[Analoguesat]

The windows option is dead easy and we can talk you through the general set up probably in an afternoon. I followed some online instructions that were on the Low Flying Wales website - a site both me & Chris are using. If you can install a programme in windows you can get this running. You dont even need to build an aerial - you can buy them pre made.

Im running the feeder s/w 24/7 on my old netbook. The VRS s/w which produces the pointy "splat" charts runs on my desktop so I can keep an eye on whats overhead

 

[jeallen01]

Chris & A/S

OK - I'll be very happy to accept your very kind offers!

But first I need to build/buy an antenna - a discone would be good, but there's quite a few home-builds talked-about on this section of the Fighter Control forum, and, at times, I was thinking about building one of the bow-tie types to mount "somewhere" (but the attic could be difficult as it is lined with double-aluminium skinned Celotex foam insulation - and so it will probably have to go outside at roof level) to use with my Uniden UBCXLT125 scanner anyway. Therefore it will probably be a discone - depends a bit on price.

PS: I can "hear" pretty much what is overhead around here without anything "technical" - we're only 5 miles N of Heathrow (luckily, not on the flightpath - so far!) and 2 miles S of Northholt!

 

[Archive-8]

I am also part of the south west aviation virtual radar server, I have a merged feed.



My feed is also merged.

 

[Analoguesat]

Chris & A/S

OK - I'll be very happy to accept your very kind offers!

But first I need to build/buy an antenna - a discone would be good, but there's quite a few home-builds talked-about on this section of the Fighter Control forum, and, at times, I was thinking about building one of the bow-tie types to mount "somewhere" (but the attic could be difficult as it is lined with double-aluminium skinned Celotex foam insulation - and so it will probably have to go outside at roof level) to use with my Uniden UBCXLT125 scanner anyway. Therefore it will probably be a discone - depends a bit on price.

PS: I can "hear" pretty much what is overhead around here without anything "technical" - we're only 5 miles N of Heathrow (luckily, not on the flightpath - so far!) and 2 miles S of Northholt!

Build an 8 segment coax co-linear, mount it inside a 6 foot length of plastic conduit from B&Q (yes really!) and hook it up to a tv dongle and you will be amazed at its range. Ive had over 100 miles even with living in a valley

Build details here

You will be astounded at what pops up around Heathrow - the skies are reasonably quiet here but every Saturday an Air Tahiti goes over here which is exciting to see every weekend - and wishing I was on it going somewhere exciting!

When you are ready to go start your own thread in this section then we can guide you and sort out the inevitable teething problems.

You can use a rapberry pi or do a windows build if you have a spare computer. Ive personally found the windows build easier to get going.

 

[jeallen01]

A/S

Thanks - watching the video now, but would probably want a w/band antenna anyway/as well to use with the Uniden scanner (which cover most of the 25-960 MHz bands, except broadcast) , and so would probably buy the discone and build the co-linear - got stacks of WF100 and, I think, the PVC pipe in the garage already, so very little to buy.

Was wondering where to put antennas up (the house is difficult) , but I now think I would put them near the sat dishes at the end of the garden and diplex them into the "spare" sat cable I now have from there to the house (with another diplexer at this end to split them up again). Looks a relatively good solution, and all I need to buy are the discone and the diplexers.

 

[Archive-8]

I need to buy are the discone and the diplexers.

If you do find dimplexer's to do that, please share the link, I could use something like that.

I used a 16 way Diseqc switch to combine all my satellites down one cable, and I use the shotgun cable for the 1090mhz aerial.

I am also running a noo elec dongle for ascars decoding (aircraft sms) the dongle can tune to 4 channels at once. A conventional scanner can only lock 1 channel at a time, freqs (135mhz)

Just ask if you need anything

 

[jeallen01]

Chris

I am actually thinking of good-quality "domestic" triplexers with separate sat, UHF and VHF (and below) inputs - they seem to have a top-end cross-over at around 1GHz and so I hope I could feed the co-linear for 1090 MHz into the sat input and the wideband discone into the UHF input - and that would still leave the VHF input for anything below the lower cross-over frequency, which includes the AM 108-132MHz and the FM 220-270MHz military bands (for which a somewhat more frequency-friendly broadband dipole could then be added. Probably could also add an analogue cctv (if I do get a CCTV system)camera in there as well if I could find another diplexer to combine those signals with the MF/VHF stuff as well as passing the 18V supply to the camera - or am now I getting into "dreamworld" ?

PS: The downlead from the above would the spare out of the 4x coming from that end of the garden - 2 come from the Twin LNB on the steerable dish, 1 from a 10-way diseqc switch for the fixed dishes, and the 4th (and now spare) is one of those coming from the 60cm dish (still there but unused) that got replaced by the completely separate Raven for Sky on the conservatory roof at the back of the house. Thus I would not have the problem of trying to combine the 1090 MHz signals with those from the sat set-up as you may have.

 

[jeallen01]

Update:
Asked Chris for some advice on what SRD radio to buy, and just pulled the plug on a NESDR unit, couple of diplexers without filters either side of the x-over point of around 900 MHz, a 900 MHz discone and miscellaneous connector adapters and so on - so still need to build the co-linear (but that will probably have to wait a few days as I need to finish repairing the garage roof edges, and, unfortunately I've not been feeling too well for the last few days and need to see how that works out). Will be running the s/w on my ACER net-top (2-core Celeron and 8GB RAM) which has lots of USB ports and runs W10 Pro.

There will, however, still be PROBLEMS to overcome (not the least my "brain" or what is left of it)!

 

[Analoguesat]

Have a good read of this site

Installing the MLAT-Client on Windows – LowFlyingWales.co.uk

Nice easy to follow instructions for windows. If you want to feed data to one of the tracking sites I would recommend you feed the LFW as described. Its run by hobbyists for hobbyists, and both myself & Chris contribute to it. If you are on facebook there is a very active group called 360Radarwith loads of helpful guys on it. If not well me Chris Vipersan & Llew will try to sort your issues out. You can always add in more feeds to things like Flight Radar 24 later once you are up & running & have a bit more experience with the software.

 

[jeallen01]

A/S
Thanks - will try to follow-up on that (OTOH, not on Facebook until I know that I can deal with its very substantial personal "security" issues)

Also, Chris suggested that I start a new thread on how to get up and running for newbies with Virtual Radar - however, your link above would make a good basis from which to start, so maybe you would like to start it instead with the same thing (and then "we" will hope to run with that thereafter)?

 

[Analoguesat]

OK give me a few minutes.

 

[Archive-8]

OK give me a few minutes.

We should get a few how to's posted up.

 

[jeallen01]

Duh - linguistics - for " plug" in an earlier post please read "trigger" - as I then said there are PROBLEMS with which my aging brain needs to cope!

 

[Analoguesat]

Here we go.

Beginners guide to setting up a basic windows plane tracking system

Still needs a bit of work - need to put the links for the aircraft silhouettes & logos in

 

[Archive-8]

I should point out we also need a bit of software to receive the ads-b stream, and stream to virtual radar server.

ModeSDecod2 is my choice.
Dump1090 is very good.
RTL1090 is also good.

Again we can guide you through the steps.

 

[Analoguesat]

The how to will have to do tonight - Ive gone tired - Chris feel free to add in anything important Ive forgotten

 

[jeallen01]

A/S

Cheers, look forward to reading/participating in that.

And have now read the first posts in the new thread - many thanks and a have a good night's kip

 

[Archive-8]

ModeSDecod2 setup ModeSDecod2 Setup Windows

 

[Archive-8]

Added some "plugins" but can't get the google maps day-night plugin to work.