thebaldgeek

 The wait was worth it. The crew at https://shop.airframes.io have really done an amazing job with this antenna mount. Backing up just a bit and sort of repeating a bit more of what's already on my GitHub Iridium page , but this time, we are just talking about antennas for Iridium. Over the years I've easily tested about 8 to 10 antennas and 3 SDRs and a lot of combinations of them. I guess an exhaustive blog should really photograph and list model numbers... And if the results had been close or nebulous in any way, IF that were the case, then yes, I would be listing everything I've tried and would be asking for sanity checks left and right. But, as you can probably tell, there was no uncertainty; we have a rock solid clear 'winner' in the Iridium antenna world. The winner first.... The HC610. Small in size, beast in Iridium ACARS. Let's see some of who else was in the race... The UFO and 'the stick'. Both about the same. The UFO was active. The stick, ...

UPDATE: 6 hours and 8 minutes of downtime. All three sites are back up and running.  For once, the website is down not because of me or my 'code', but it seems that the VM host is down. How do I know? Because all three websites are down. The main site, tbg.airframes runs on Node-RED, that one is on me. Thats the dumpster fire we all know and love - 200 ish users per day. tbgmap.airframes is tar1090, nothing to do with Node-RED at all, and it's a Docker container. About 30 people per day use that one. tbgacarshub.airframes is JavaScript, again, nothing to do with tar1090 or Node-RED and again, it's a Docker container. About 5 people per day hit that one up (5 makes me a bit sad, but eh). For all three to be down, it means that the host is down. The final 'proof' is that I can't shell (Linux terminal session) into the virtual machine (VM). It's no secret that I am hosted by Contabo.  They went down a few months back for about 2 frustrating days. Why frustr...

I've started to take a closer look at the custom ADSC and Iridium registration list of airframes I've been building over the past 5ish years. 563 airframes. 206 of which are tagged as military. Here is my question.... If you look at my blog about the database structure I was proposing, I was going to have the one database entry per airframe and load up all the new columns with the different ways that airframe can be identified by ACARS from its avionics. This would mean that my code has to search all the columns to see if there is a match anywhere for both the new incoming ACARS message and for any site searches that the users might do. After looking at the list, I'm now rethinking this idea.... I'm now thinking that each ID option should have its own entry in the database. The clearest way to show a 'for example' is with the ADSB vs ADSC hex. AE2925;162782;E6;10;Boeing E-6B Mercury;AE040D;; So here the ADSC hex has been added by me in the 'year' field ...

 A fellow avgeek in Ireland read my 'Death the hyphen. Long live the hyphen!' blog and reminded me that he and I exchanged DM's a few years back at our mutual frustration of those registrations that have a + in them. I had totally forgotten, but it all came rushing back like a bad dream. Indeed, what a pain in the site search page they are. What should we do fellow agveeks? The scope of the problem. I did a quick and dirty search of the ADSB community database the site uses (reminder, the mictroncis one): "select reg from airframes where reg like '%+%';" I got 281 results. A quick screenshot of some random returns: And if you hit the site search, some show up, some don't. Here is one that did. BTW, this is a really big part of why I have the 'you searched' section at the bottom. It doubles as an airframes look up. Did you notice that? Drop a comment on this blog either way. I've actually had a DM from a site mega power user about how this ...

Ok. Its decided. As mentioned in the last blog: Death to the hyphen. Long live the hyphen! That said. Here is what is currently in the mictronics database. Note, its a CSV, comma separated variables. It goes something like this; ADSB hex;      REG:     ICAO  type;      mil/civ;      description;      year;      owner AE1BAB;167926;C30J;10;Lockheed Martin KC-130J Hercules;;; AE1BEB;07-1468;C30J;10;Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 Hercules;;; Two examples at random. One with a hyphen in the reg and one without. Note also that some airframes records have all the details, some have some bits missing. That's not important. Also unimportant is how I have been (ab)using the year and owner fields for ADSC hex and iridium registration data. That's what's going to change. Lets break it out for the blog; ADSB hex: AE1BAB . We all know what this is. My site uses this first. REG: 167926 or 07-1468 . Most know these...

 <sigh> I mean, if it was not for the previous blog rant, I would not have dug into the issue and found the problem. (Well, one of the very many problem's with the site). So there is value in setting me off into rant mode - just be sure to get out of the way and don't take anything I say while in said mode personally. I'm mostly ranting at myself. Honestly, the real question is how in the world do so many of you avgeeks put up with this dumpster fire of a site and the beat up scrappy ally cat that is its mascot? (Honestly, could you get a more accurate image of my website than this?) Actually, one of you kindly gave me the answer to that in a DM overnight... let me anonymously quote.. "And also I have to say thank you very much for being so comitted to ACARS, your website (together with Airframes) has been the biggest step forward in Aircarft tracking in the recent years." Man, that just about brings a tear to my bald geek heart. Ok, back to the title and su...

I've seen this effect time and time again over the years with the computer work I've done right across the board.... If you include an example screenshot, the reader becomes hyperfocused on the screenshot and deprecates* all my words or the plead to look at the big picture of what I am trying to say. Case and point. There are 3-4 (Depending on how you count it) versions of the Iridium toolkit in use. Two of them are not compatible with the the other two in many ways. Two of them are annoyingly close. Every feeder will calmy state they are using 'the latest' and the version can be hard for the feeder to find. Updating the feeder is very tricky for most - then you have 2 docker versions floating around which do stuff with acars router (or not). The result of that mess for me is that my site has code on the Iridium feeder input that tries to auto detect and convert all 4 versions into one usable version for the site. (I really should annoy Kevin more and find out how the b...

I got some feedback on my Iridium rego blog. (1 comment and 1 DM - a rant for another time, but it seems that 80% of folks that use my site are happy to not help, 19% only complain and 1% actually help me build it - its a hard slog for me with those numbers, but its been that way since year zero). Two main aspects to the feedback. 1. What I call rego is actually an MSN. Manufactures Serial Number. The serial stays with the airframe for life. I think I want to go site wide and rename all the tables from reg or rego to MSN Thoughts? 2. It was suggested that I use the ID in the ACARS messages to set the MSN. This is now pretty much the topic for the rest of this blog. Lets look at the 3 main SATCOM ACARS sources and see what they look like and what you all can tell me about them and how I might use the data to build the site airframe database. L-Band. Here is a random military L-Band message. Here is what I think. These are questions, not facts. 1. ADSB/ADSC Hex 2. MSN (ie, what I have be...

  Iridium ACARS are new, annoying, exciting, pseudorandom and probably never ending in scope. When an irdm ACARS message (of any type) comes into the system it does not have an ICAO hex. It does not have an ADSB registration (98% of the time). It does not have consistent formatting. It can have a . at the front, or it can have .. at the front. Then it can have a single 0 at the front, some have 00 at the front. Sometimes you can swap out one of the zeros for a - and it will match an ADSB rego. Sometimes not. Ok, so for every single irdm ACARS message that comes in I have code that removes . and .. and then builds a few registrations by swapping 0's for -'s and then tests the 4 combos against the ADSB db that the ADSB community maintain (the https://www.mictronics.de/ one). Stick with me, I'm getting to my question.... Most times (sometimes) one of the 'test' regos the code makes gets a hit. If it does, I currently don't do anything with it (a match now is a matc...

 welcome avgeeks. tbg here. First blog post. March 2025. Not sure how often I am going to post here. I guess it just depends on how the website is going and what issues I have on my plate that I need input on. All that said, I will try and X/BlueSky when I post here, I guess there is a way to subscribe to this thing.  The most pressing thing on my mind of late is how to better get Iridium ACARS merged with the rest of the pages on the website. I guess that's the end game result I am looking for. The trouble starts much further back in the game.... Iridium ACARS don't include ICAO hex address. Iridium ACARS don't include standard (ADSB) registration data.  So, we don't have much to go on when it comes to Iridium. Blah blah blah... lets publish this and see what it looks like.