Iridium regos
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 match in a month ect).
This is where the question starts....
If I don't get a hit, I currently add it to the list of 'unknown iridium' regos on the bottom of the irdm page. (A blog about this table / form at a future time).
Here is the question.... How do I enable a site user search for an iridium airframe?
If they look for an ADSB hex, I need to be able have had the irdm reg match an ADSB reg (and thus hex) in the past already in the database the site uses.
If they look for an ADSB rego, I need to have both the ADSB reg and the irdm reg in the search... and, one of the many questions is, do I hide the weird irdm reg from the site users?
We have a precedent for this... ADSC hex codes.
I put the ADSC hex in the db with the same record as the ADSB hex. It does not matter what the site user searches for, they get the matching ACARS.
An example:
AE020E;79-1948;DC10;10;McDonnell Douglas KC-10A Extender;AE3FFE;;
ADSB hex at the front, ADSC hex at the end.
Search for either on the site and you get what you think you want. The user does not need to think at the site search... .'Hmm, do I put in the ADSB hex or the ADSC hex?'
Ok, iridium... Two examples.
ADFCEA;40139;BE40;10;Beechcraft T-1A Jayhawk;94-0139;USAF;
AE01D4;64-14847;R135;10;Boeing RC-135U Combat Sent;6414847;USAF;
ADSB reg at the start and irdm reg at the end.
So here (finally) is the question. To hyphen or not to hyphen?
I feel like the - is the issue. I want to remove all - from the site database.
Let the user put it in the site search, but behind the web front end, remove it.
If I have to include it, it gets real messy for both me and the site user.
I've no idea what I am doing.
I have no idea what I should do.
I have no idea how to do what ever it is I should do.
I'm totally for removing the hyphen. I don't think there are many if any Regs that are only distinguished by the hyphen position. Eurocontrol removes it, every airport flight information system I've seen removes it. Your users are smart enough to know that there might be one in there even if it's not shown. And if you really want to you can replace the rego without the hyphen for the display to the user as the last step
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by and leaving your thoughts.
DeleteI never thought about the airport flight info systems not having one. Great point.
And you're right. I can actually hide it pretty well by allowing the searcher to have one (or not) and stripping it out before I search the 'no hyphen' column in my custom database.
I've also been thinking overnight about how I can actually test removing it in stages. It had not occurred to me that it would be possible to do this bit by bit across the site.