My Aircraft Tracking Evolution

Since my last post about picking up ACARS messages I've made more progress, enough to warrant another post! Let's dig in.

ACARS

Since last post, I've added 2 more receivers - one more for ACARS and one for VDLM2. It was pretty easy to add the additional containers. This increased spectrum coverage helps ensure I pick up juicy messages.

Antennas

I added a metal plate and attached small a magnetic shelf to it to clean up and allow for more antennas.

ADS-B

I now listen for ADS-B, which is the small antenna third from left in the previous picture. This allows me to get position information for aircraft which I feed into acars-annotator so I don't need to use ADS-B Exchange anymore. I use adsb-ultrafeeder which is a breeze to set up.

ACARS-Annotator

Along with tar1090 support as mentioned before which enables getting positional information (and more) from aircraft via ADS-B, acars-annotator now supports ACARS, VDLM2 and ADS-B Exchange as annotators. It has New Relic, Discord and custom webhooks support and it supports a number of filters such as filtering for messages with text, or even better: filtering for messages with a minimum number of consecutive dictionary words.

Future

I only pick up aircraft via ADS-B out to about 100mi so I bought a much better ADS-B antenna which I plan on attaching to my brick chimney. I'll probably just use zip ties as they'll survive weather just fine and I don't want to drill holes into the brick. I have a cable that's just long enough and I'll feed it in through a window that's cracked open with foam to plug gaps.

Postscript

I have a buddy that flies recreationally and he went up after I set up ADS-B so it was just the coolest to track him in the air. More range soon!