Since I was a teenager, I have had an interest in air band listening. Over the years I have had MANY radios capable of listening to the civilian air band, and even some that could tune into the military one, although where I live is pretty hopeless on the military band, as there are no RAF bases nearby.
I have spent many a happy hour listening to the pilots and air traffic controllers talking to one another. To begin with it was all just meaningless chatter, but over the years I learnt about the basics of ATC, and have grown my knowledge of the subject to the point where I have a pretty good understanding of what is going on and why.
It has always quite amused me that my ham radio gear has, more often than not, had more VHF air frequencies saved in the memories than ham channels. This has mow got to the point that I now have a radio whichnis totally dedicated to air channels and has exactly zero ham ones saved, while another of my radios has only 4 ham repeaters programmed in, while the other memories are purely aircraft ones.
Whilst I have been aware of the existence of both ACARS and the personal live radar units yo can now buy for some time, I have never really taken any time to learn about what they can do, until a few weeks ago that is.
After a few abortive attempts, I was able to get an ACARS decoder working on my shack laptop via the Signalink USB inteface. For some reason that I am still not clear on, I simply could not get this to work to begin with, but after several hours of fiddling with settings and swearing, it suddenly burst into life with messages appearing on my screen.
I did a bit of research then about the live radar, and spent a few evenings looking at the web based ones, and then bit the bullet and bought myself a used Kinetic Avionics SBS-1ER unit. I was pleasantly surprised just how easy this was to get working - it really was plug and play - why can't everything be that easy?
Within minutes of plugging it in, I was seeing aircraft on my screen as far away as Bristol, and I even tracked one plane from around that area to touchdown at Birmingham both on the screen on on the air band radio. I would hardly call it "exciting", but it was most definitely interesting and quite incredible to see just how far technology has come over the last few years.
We are hoping to move house later this year, and have started to declutter and get rid of things we don't need anymore, and the first phase of this was to sell some of my unused radio gear, which meant that I sold the Icom 703+, the Yaesu 817ND, the Yaesu FT900 and the JRC NRD525 receiver. I was more than a little sad to see these go in a way, but it cleared some room and brought me in a sizeable sum of cash.........some of which has since been spent on the SBS-1ER and a Yaesu FT8800 which has been dedicated to the airband.
This is a nice radio because it has two receivers in the one box, and both can be tuned to the same band, including having BOTH on the airband at the same time. This coupled with the FT7800 means that I can monitor 3 channels at the same time, or 4 channels if I also use the built in receiver in the SBS unit. I have to confess that I am not impressed with the SBS built in radio - it does not seem to be very sensitive, and is the least impressive part of the whole package.
So, that's where I'm at with the new angle of the hobby. Where it will go from here remains to be seen. While I have gotten the radar unit working, and am using the basics of it quite happily, I gather that I still have an awful lot to learn about it and what it is capable of doing. I am looking forward to it very much!
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