STANAG 4285 Decoding with RTL-SDR

In this video YouTube user Superphish shows decoding of the French Navy STANAG 4285 test signal. He used an rtl-sdr, Ham-it-up upconverter, SDRSharp and a decoding program called Sorcerer. Watch in HD to read the text, though the text basically just repeats the French equivalent to the quick brown fox, “VOYEZ VOUS LE BRICK GEANT QUE J EXAMINE PRES DU GRAND WHARF” and some test symbols over and over.

Fair warning with the Sorcerer download: Some people report that their virus scanner detects a trojan on some Sorcerer download links. The Sorcerer link above seems to be clean though, as far as my virus scanner reports. An alternative decoder is Sigmira.

STANAG 4285 is the NATO standard for HF communication, and signals can be found all over the HF spectrum.

Stanag 4285 Decoding with RTL-SDR (RTL2832), Sorcerer and SDR Sharp

7 comments

  1. John

    Sigmira seems to have stopped working.

    I think The author needs to update the data file which from past experience has date data in it.

  2. Chris

    Sorcerer was great, until it just stopped showing up in Windows 7. I can open the executable, but no window appears. Has anyone else had this problem?

    • Josh

      Check to see what priviledge level the app is run at, admin, user, etc, it may need to be run as admin. Also your av may be blocking it as some avs see the app as a virus. If you can get the app executed and it shows up in the task bar/system tray simply click maximise to bring it full screen.

    • AmatorRadioResearcher(Expert)

      Dear Chris
      right click on the sorcerer ICON and then maximize it.
      The window appears Again.
      Good Luck

Post a comment

You may use the following HTML:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>