[ACARS] life here?

[KY1K]

OK Dean,

I've looked at that site and have more questions than answers at this time.

I'm interested in vhf acars because it operates at 131 MHz and might 
indicate propagation enhancement on the 144 Mhz ham band.

Everywhere I look, I see offers to sell software that links to acars 
servers over the internet and fancy kinds of things like that. I absolutely 
don't need any of the fancy features.

I want to be able to set up my own receiver and antenna and run an audio 
cable to my soundcard. When a packet is heard, I want it to be plotted on a 
map. I expect to see many flights within 200 miles of my antenna, perhaps a 
bit further. But, when I begin to hear signals 600 to 1500 miles away, I 
want to know about it FAST as this indicates a band opening....which is why 
I was interested in acars to start with! I'm looking for tropo or e-skip 
alerts for 2 meters.

The current state of the art is to monitor the FM broadcast band and try to 
ID a broadcast heard on a frequency that normally does not contain a local 
station. Many times, this indicates the MUF is at 108 Mhz, but it's a long 
way between 108 and 144 Mhz. Many times, the MUF will reach 108 Mhz, but 
there is not enhancement on 2 meters.

When a signal is heard, I only need to know how far away the transmitter is 
from my house, and the direction the signal came from....

That's it-don't need to know what the plane looks like, it's altitude, it's 
arrival time, it's callsign or whether it's Delta or Air Alaska....

Is there any software that is free or nearly free?

Thanks,

Art