[ACARS] Re: HF ACARS

[roger preston]

Downloaded the program last night (7th Mar 02) and had it up and running
straight away. I'd suggest for those in the UK to try 8942KHz first as
it comes from Shannon. 
If you have it loaded and in front of you, then the sounds on the radio
appear as text in the "box" where the word Listening is written and will
look like this 
Preamble 300  bps 1.8 sec Interleaver FREQ ERR 98.107251 Hz Errors 2
The bit about freq error is, I understand from an e-mail from the
program's author, a guide to tuning the radio a bit better. He claims
that it should read within .5 of a Hz (quite unachievable for most
people) so he corrects the error in the software. Just how much it can
be off freq I haven't yet established.

I click on the HFNPFU button (but it's worth setting on the verbose
button and then trying out other buttons). SPDU will tell you the ground
station you've tuned into as in 
Ground Station ID   = 7 SHANNON - IRELAND.

I tried 8977KHz this morning but it seems to be the Royal Navy's
Yeovilton Ops.
As for aircraft, last night gave me a number of DLH flights. This
morning I've got so far:-

10:53:42  UTC  Flight ID = LH8424  LAT 49 10 30  N  LON 9 43 54  E
F-WWCB which is using F171 as flight ID
10:43:24  UTC  Flight ID = F171    LAT 43 34 48  N  LON 1 24 58  E
strange times etc. as in
00:00:00  UTC  Flight ID = PO0000  LAT 180 0 0  N  LON 180 0 0  E 


I am very happy with the program as it makes sense of the chirps...

As for suggestions on improvements, perhaps a DDE link to a plotting
program so that the positions can be seen on a map (such as the AirNav
program?).

As for comparing it to VHF ACARS, it's nice to be able to see aircraft
locations around Europe (so far). The VHF locations can only be up to
200 miles away or so. Living near LHR allows me to see megabytes of VHF
data per day so perhaps a few kilobytes of HF ACARS is easier to
manage....

When I get a quiet minute, I'll put a bit more info up on the web site
relating to my visit to the Prestwick OACC about a year ago (there are
details about Atlantic clearances using the VHF datalink (ACARS). It has
moved from one ISP to another and is, I think, now at 
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rogera.preston/shanwick.htm

Regards
Roger