Category: Applications

Virtual Plane Spotting Livestream by Piping ADS-B Data into Flight Simulator

Over on YouTube we've recently discovered a live stream by channel Information Zulu that has created a virtual live 24hr view of LAX airport air traffic by piping ADS-B data into a flight simulator game. The stream also combines this with live air traffic audio and arrivals and departures information. Other videos on his channel show highlights like go arounds.

We're not sure what he's using to pipe ADS-B data into the simulator or exactly what simulator this is, but in the video description he notes that he uses a Pi 4, RTL-SDR blog V3 with ADS-B LNA, and an AirNav antenna to receive the ADS-B data. 

This reminds us of the Android ADSB Flight Tracker app which also has a 3D view, and the post about using ADS-B data to simulate what aircraft instruments would show on the real aircraft.

Decoding Radio Telemetry Heard on News Helicopter Video Footage with GNU Radio

Twitter user @d0tslash was watching news helicopter footage of the BLM protests on the 28th of May when he heard something that sounded like an RF telemetry feed in the background audio on the helicopter's video feed. Having seen this previous success at decoding similar helicopter telemetry, he contacted his friend proto17 who proceeded to reverse engineer and figure out how to decode the telemetry, in the end discovering that it was providing location data for the helicopter.

Over on GitHub proto17 has documented the complete process that he took in reverse engineering the telemetry. He first explored the audio in Baudline discovering that there was a 1200 Hz wide FSK signal. Next he used GNU Radio to further analyze the signal, discovering it's baud rate, resampling the signal and then using a GFSK block to demodulate the signal into 1's and 0's.

Finally he used some clever terminal tricks and a Python script to discover the bit pattern and convert the bits into ASCII characters which reveals the helicopter coordinates. The coordinates decoded indicate that the helicopter was indeed circling the protest area.

We looked into the news helicopters in use during the protests and found that Denver news stations all share one helicopter with registration N6UX. Plugging that into adsbexchange.com and looking at the helicopter ADS-B history on the 28th gives a good match to proto17's decoded data. 

News helicopter telemetry audio vs ADS-B history
News helicopter telemetry audio vs ADS-B history

YouTube Tutorial: Installing and Using CubicSDR on a Mac

Over on YouTube user RickMakes has uploaded a video showing how to install and use CubicSDR on a Mac computer. CubicSDR is a general purpose program compatible with multiple SDRs including the RTL-SDR and is one of the few SDR programs available for use on MacOS.

The installation is as simple as downloading the .dmg file from the CubicSDR GitHub page and running the automatic installer. Afterwards you can move the program to your Applications folder. Once opened CubicSDR should then automatically detect any RTL-SDR that is plugged in.

In the rest of the video RickMakes demonstrates CubicSDR and the RTL-SDR in action, receiving various broadcast FM and ISM band signals.

CubicSDR Basic Setup on Mac with RTL-SDR Blog V3

Using ADS-B Exchange to Track Police and Military Aircraft Monitoring the George Floyd Protests

During the recent George Floyd BLM protests police and military aircraft have been playing a large part in the surveillance of protestors. All these aircraft are required to transmit ADS-B which of course can be monitored with an RTL-SDR or other SDR. Many volunteers around the world use RTL-SDRs to upload ADS-B data to an online aggregation service, so flight data from all over the world can be accessed in one place. However, most ADS-B aggregation services like FlightAware and FlightRadar24 censor police and military aircraft from the raw ADS-B data received from the RTL-SDRs. ADS-B Exchange is the only service that has a policy to not censor any aircraft.

Buzzfeed recently ran an interesting article that used ADS-B Exchange to highlight the flight paths of various surveillance aircraft used during the protests, as well as the aircraft types used and who they are registered to. Most interestingly they saw that two military Black Hawk helicopters and a CBP Predator drone was used in Minnesota, and two military Lakota helicopters were using in Washington, DC.

As mentioned in a previous post, ADS-B Exchange recently updated their interface and backend, and they now run tar1090, which is a fully featured ADS-B mapping platform that can display the historical tracks of any tracked aircraft.

We also note that on Twitter John Wiseman @lemonodor also runs several "advisory circular bots" that make use of ADS-B Exchange data to automatically tweet a notification when aircraft are detected as having a circular flight path.

Police helicopter historical tracks over Minneapolis via adsb-exchange.com
Police helicopter historical tracks over Minneapolis via adsbexchange.com

Techminds: Building a V-Dipole for Weather Satellite Reception

A new video showing how to build a V-dipole for weather satellite reception has been uploaded over on the Tech Minds YouTube channel. A V-dipole isa dipole antenna arranged in a 120 degrees "vee" shape, and mounted horizontally. It was first popularized by Adam 9A4QV who realized that such a simple antenna would work well for low earth orbit satellites like the NOAA and Meteor weather sats.

The video shows how to use some steel rods, a plastic pipe and terminal block to build the v-dipole. After building and mounting the antenna in the required North-South orientation he shows how he's using Gpredict with SDR# and WxToImg to decode the NOAA satellite image.

How To Build A V Dipole For Receiving Weather Satellites

Monitoring for Storm Warnings with an RTL-SDR

Over on YouTube the "Unboxing Tomorrow" channel has uploaded a video explaining how he uses RTL-SDR dongles to monitor various radio channels for storm warnings. He notes how he uses his RTL-SDR to monitor the NOAA national weather service channel as well as the Skywarn channel which is the amateur radio based storm spotting network used in some parts of the USA. He also monitors a P25 trunking network with DSD+ for good measure.

In addition he shows a bit of his setup which includes an RTL-SDR Blog V3 and Raspberry Pi connected to an LCD screen all mounted on a neat rail system made from T-slots.

Storm Monitoring with Software Defined Radio

YouTube GNU Radio Tutorials for Windows 10

Thank you to YouTuber M Khanfar for submitting news about his various Windows GNU Radio tutorials that he has been uploading to YouTube. So far he's uploaded tutorials on creating an FM Receiver, Air Band Receiver, AM/NFM Receiver, NFM Receiver with Squelch and Recorder and Spectrum Analyzer with GNU Radio on Windows 10. The tutorials are straight to the point and designed to be followed along with the video. The full list of videos can be found on his YouTube channel, and we have embedded one below.

Build NFM Reciver with Squelch and Recorder Activity GNU RADIO Win10

A Hydrogen Line Radio Telescope made from a Homemade Helical Antenna and RTL-SDR

Thank you to Geoff for submitting his experience with creating a hydrogen line radio telescope out of an easy to build helical antenna, Raspberry Pi, LNA and an RTL-SDR. The Hydrogen Line is an observable increase in RF power at 1420.4058 MHz created by Hydrogen atoms. It is most easily detected by pointing a directional antenna towards the Milky Way as there are many more hydrogen atoms in our own galaxy. This effect can be used to measure the shape and other properties of our own galaxy.

Earlier in the year we uploaded a tutorial showing how to observe the Hydrogen line with a 2.4 GHz WiFi antenna. In Geoff's setup he used a home made Helical antenna instead. This antenna is basically a long tube with a spiral wire element wrapped around the tube. He also shows how he needed to impedance match the antenna with a triangular piece of copper tape. The result is a directional antenna with about 13 dBi gain. To complete his setup he used a NooElec SAWBird H1+ LNA/Filter, an RTL-SDR Blog V3 dongle and a Raspberry Pi.

The results show a clear increase in RF power at the Hydrogen line frequency when the antenna points at the Milky Way, indicating that the setup works as expected. It's good to see a Helical working for this, as it is fairly light weight and could easily be mounted on a motorized mount to scan the entire sky.

A Hydrogen Line Radio Telescope made with a Helical Antenna.
A Hydrogen Line Radio Telescope made with a Helical Antenna.