[ACARS] BA 'H1' Message oddity

[Ed Wilson]

Folks

An Airmaster / AirNav oddity

A number of BA aircraft, mainly (only?) B747s, put out 'H1'-type messages 
using 'BAWnnn' rather than 'BA0nnn' which they use for the normal messages

Recently a few of these seem to have 'lost' the 'BA' part of the message

On AirNav this is logged both on screen and to file as:

ACARS mode: 2  Aircraft reg: .G-CIVB
Message label: H1  Block id: 0  Msg. no: D86A
Flight id: W112
Message content:-
#DFBACM231BQG-CIVBBABAW112  KJFKEGLL150103  51ER013423 255 212B 015217
-135 350060808  965242601365383   837 874 921 838 5080 8202 325918161
01219437954504184 78791492::: 33 5334-135127814941776    2    20520
-----------------------------------------------------------[15/01/2003 
05:31]

This is different from AirMaster V3 which puts it out ...

ACARS mode: 2  Aircraft reg: .G-CIVB
Message label: H1  Block id: 0  Msg. no: D86A
Flight id:   W112
Message content:-
#DFBACM231BQG-CIVBBABAW112  KJFKEGLL150103  51ER013423 255 212B 015217
-135 350060808  965242601365383   837 874 921 838 5080 8202 325918161
01219437954504184 78791492::: 33 5334-135127814941776    2    20520
-----------------------------------------------------------[15/01/2003 
05:30]

(I will get the time on the two PCs synchronised some time!)

In AirNav the field appears only 4 characters long; whereas there are two 
leading spaces in the AirMaster version and the field is the expected six 
characters

I have no idea what the 'real' raw data message contains

Nor do I know (yet, because I haven't tried) what DACARS will do with the 
'short' Flight id - Bart?

Ed

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