[ACARS] Newbie to Acars needs some advice

[Colin Knight]

Hello List,

I'm just getting into acars -  been four days now lol - and need a bit of advice re online acars servers.

I'm using the Acarsd client software - mainly because of its support for servers as I'm not sure if the sound card in my machine (a 1ghz laptop portable) is good enough to work with the acars signals. When I can get hold of a suitable cable to link up my scanner (an AOR3000A) to the machine I'll give it a try - but I'm having trouble tracking one down at the moment. 

I'm in the southern UK and through Acarsd can only find one useable server (eglf prefix) - and even that one seems to be down a lot so I'm trying to find something more reliable - even up 24/7 if that's possible.

I've tried searching around in various engines using "public/open acars server" but am getting zilch so I'm really looking for advice on how to seek out these servers.

I have an atc centre close to me and thought about asking there - but as listening to aircraft transmissions and acars isn't strictly legal over here they might get funny about it so I feel they're best left alone and I don't know where else to start.

Can anyone on here help me with this please?

Thanks.

Colin

50.58N 1.21W (about half a mile from touchdown to r/w 20 at EGHI and the SAM vor)