Topics

1

OGN-R PilotAware / Reduction of (number of) antennas

« on: May 08, 2020, 02:26:30 pm »

So currently I have 3 antennas dedicated to pilot aware, an 868 colinear for Pilotaware, an 868 colinear for Flarm and a multiband colinear being used for ADSB. 

I need to free up the Multiband colinear for other purposes, so am going to try splitting the Flarm aerial between the adsb and Flarm dongles.

The 3db loss from the split I can make up with an LNA.  The worse 1090 reception due to a shorter and 868 tuned antenna i will have to live with - but adsb is the least of my worries given the higher power transmissions.

Any thoughts?  I will have to wait till we get some gliders back in the air to really tell the difference  of course!

Cheers
Kev

2

OGN-R PilotAware / PilotAware-OGN hangs ocasionally, but ogn-rf and ogn-decode keep running fine

« on: May 25, 2019, 04:00:21 pm »

Hi

I have had a couple of times now when port 80 stops responding, but port 8080 and 8081 are still responding.  Digging into it, port 50000 and 50001 are still streaming their output fine, but port 50002 has stopped - nothing going past.  A quick ^X to get procServ to restart PilotAware-OGN on 50002 are we are quickly back to normal.

Anything we can do to get you more info on what goes wrong at that point?  A more recent version of procServ would enable the --history option so we could see the last things printed?

Cheers
Kev

3

OGN-R PilotAware / OGN (range) flooded from PWCV32QG & PWWestBfd?

« on: May 15, 2019, 11:32:23 am »

Hi All

I run an OGN Range service, and it appears to be being flooded by PAW stations, and more specifically by  PWCV32QG & PWWestBfd:

Code: [Select]

[root@ognrange kevin]# ncat localhost 50000 | grep "\->" | awk -F \> '{print $2}' | head -n 1000 | sort | uniq -c
      2 AIRS03
      1 FLRDDBCB5
     38 PAW3E7B05
      1 PAW402956
     13 PAW402ECC
     10 PAW404A8B
     22 PAW404DE6
     99 PAW4050B7
     16 PAW40540D
     41 PAW405D94
     21 PAW405FB1
    368 PWCV32QG
    368 PWWestBfd
I am not familiar enough with the APRS network that OGN use for passing information around - but at least the PWCV32QG & PWWestBfd lines look very out of place?

Code: [Select]

->PWWestBfd>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN2:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware<-
--------------------------------------------------------
details beacon PWWestBfd>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN2:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware
::            PWWestBfd: ppm -99.0/-99.0 db [PWWestBfd>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN2:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware]
PWWestBfd: LOWCPU & noppm (flagged 7163 times)PWWestBfd>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN2:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware>>cpu 0 0 ppm, 0 db

->PWCV32QG>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN1:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware<-
--------------------------------------------------------
details beacon PWCV32QG>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN1:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware
::             PWCV32QG: ppm -99.0/-99.0 db [PWCV32QG>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN1:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware ]
PWCV32QG: LOWCPU & noppm (flagged 7175 times)PWCV32QG>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN1:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware>>cpu 0 0 ppm, 0 db

->PWWestBfd>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN2:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware<-
--------------------------------------------------------
details beacon PWWestBfd>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN2:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware
::            PWWestBfd: ppm -99.0/-99.0 db [PWWestBfd>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN2:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware]
PWWestBfd: LOWCPU & noppm (flagged 7164 times)PWWestBfd>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN2:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware>>cpu 0 0 ppm, 0 db

->PWCV32QG>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN1:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware<-
--------------------------------------------------------
details beacon PWCV32QG>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN1:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware
::             PWCV32QG: ppm -99.0/-99.0 db [PWCV32QG>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN1:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware ]
PWCV32QG: LOWCPU & noppm (flagged 7176 times)PWCV32QG>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,GLIDERN1:>103100h v20190511 OGN-R/PilotAware>>cpu 0 0 ppm, 0 db

4

OGN-R PilotAware / OGN-R Upgrade for for PilotAware Mode-S/3D

« on: April 29, 2019, 09:41:01 pm »

Hi

It took me a while to get around to it, and I had some problems, but EGBKE is now running v20190429.  New Pi (3B) and existing 2 x Flight Aware Pro Plus dongles, 1 connected by an active USB extension.

I started with a fresh image and booted up, ran the config script and had quite a bit of an issue with the Eprom serial numbers part.  After multiple runs of the script and multiple reboots I ended up with 1 dongle that rtl_eeprom would not recognise, because it ended up with a Vendor Id of 0ba0 rather than 0bda!  I am not sure how, rtl_eeprom doesn't even let you set the vendor id other than by a total eeprom upload.  Anyway, a hack of rtl_eeprom to recognise 0ba0 as a valid rtl, read the eeprom of the working dongle, write it to the non working dongle, manually set the serial numbers - and the script then flew through.

FR24 package installed using the 360Radar dump1090 already running and then looks to work well. fr24feed.ini if it is of help to others:

Code: [Select]

receiver="avr-tcp"
fr24key="xxx"
bs="no"
raw="no"
logmode="1"
mlat="yes"
mlat-without-gps="yes"
And finally, an motd updated for the new box to remind me where everything is:

Code: [Select]

service rtlsdr-ogn status
    Daemon - /etc/init.d/rtlsdr-ogn
    Config - /etc_org/rtlsdr-ogn.conf
    Cron - /home/pi/rtlsdr-ogn/PilotAware-OGN.update.sh to /tmp/PilotAware-OGN.crontab.log

    OGN RF - /home/pi/rtlsdr-ogn/ogn-rf
        Config - /home/pi/rtlsdr-ogn/rtlsdr-ogn-paw.conf
        Web - http://ognpaw:8080/
        Out - netcat localhost 50000

    OGN Decode - /home/pi/rtlsdr-ogn/ogn-decode
        Config - /home/pi/rtlsdr-ogn/rtlsdr-ogn-paw.conf
        Web - http://ognpaw:8081/
        Out - netcat localhost 50001

    PilotAware - /home/pi/rtlsdr-ogn/PilotAware-OGN.exe
        Config - /home/pi/rtlsdr-ogn/PilotAware-OGN.config.dat
        Web - http://ognpaw/
        Out - netcat localhost 50002
        Log - /tmp/conn360.txt

    360 Radar Dump1090 - /home/pi/360Radar/start1090
        Config - /etc_org/default/360r-mlat-test-svr2
        Config - /home/pi/360Radar/360r-mlat-test-svr2
        Out - netcat localhost 50003
        Changes - added --stats-every 5 to /home/pi/360Radar/start1090

    Virtual Radar - /home/pi/vrs/startvrs
        Config - /home/pi/.local/share/VirtualRadar.org/Configuration.xml
        Web - http://ognpaw:9000/VirtualRadar/desktop.html

service 360r-mlat-test-svr2 status

    360 Radar Mlat
        Daemon - /etc/init.d/360r-mlat-test-svr2
        Config - /etc_org/default/360r-mlat-test-svr2
        Log - /var/log/360r-mlat-test-svr2.log

service fr24feed

    Flight Radar 24 Feed
        Daemon - /etc/systemd/system/fr24feed.service
        Config - /etc_org/fr24feed.ini
        Log - /var/log/fr24feed/fr24feed.log
        Cron - /etc_org/cron.d/fr24feed_updater to /var/log/fr24feed_update.log
        Status - /usr/bin/fr24feed-status
        Web - http://ognpaw:8754/

Cheers
Kev

5

OGN-R PilotAware / A random error escaping the CRC check maybe:

« on: October 01, 2018, 09:15:16 pm »

In case it is of interest, spotted this on my OGN-R station this afternoon:

(17:10:31) TRX-RF    : PAW-RX icao=404F1F acft=08 lat=52.29578 lon=-0.77537 alt=409 :: 5217.75N 00046.52W
(17:10:33) TRX-RF    : PAW-RX icao=404F1F acft=08 lat=52.29601 lon=-0.77436 alt=409 :: 5217.76N 00046.46W
(17:10:35) TRX-RF    : PAW-RX icao=404F1F acft=08 lat=52.29612 lon=-0.77385 alt=409 :: 5217.77N 00046.43W
(17:10:40) TRX-RF    : PAW-RX icao=405F1F acft=08 lat=52.29628 lon=-0.77282 alt=410 :: 5217.78N 00046.37W
(17:10:42) TRX-RF    : PAW-RX icao=404F1F acft=08 lat=52.29695 lon=-0.76970 alt=414 :: 5217.82N 00046.18W
(17:10:43) TRX-RF    : PAW-RX icao=404F1F acft=08 lat=52.29705 lon=-0.76918 alt=415 :: 5217.82N 00046.15W
(17:10:51) TRX-RF    : PAW-RX icao=404F1F acft=08 lat=52.29791 lon=-0.76507 alt=418 :: 5217.87N 00045.90W

Notice the ICAO code of the middle station....

Cheers
Kev

6

OGN-R PilotAware / Live PAW tracking

« on: July 24, 2018, 04:52:34 pm »

Hi

Before I reinvent the wheel, is there a website that allows visibility of *just* PAW traffic (uploaded to OGN via OGN-R sites) on a map? 

Ognrange.onglide.com does a great job for the last week, month, etc, but not live.

Glidertracker.org does a great job for all OGN traffic, but doesn't allow filtering to just PAW traffic.

Live.glidernet.org has some filtering available (OGN, Flarm or ICAO), but still doesn't give a PAW options.


If not, I guess I need a subscription to the APRS feed and filter it myself for PAW traffic....

Cheers
Kev

7

General Discussion / Release 20180520

« on: May 29, 2018, 03:08:30 pm »

http://forum.pilotaware.com/index.php/topic,1270.0.html

So I have 20180520 up and running, GDL90 to SkyDemon working, UAT RX seems to be there (DUMP978 : 978/netcat Start message) but no UAT Wx received yet - I need to fly South for that one - hopefully will get to test that in a few days time.

Thanks to Lee and the team for the continued great work!

Cheers
Kev

P.S. Number of UAT TX stations is increasing - https://www.uavionix.com/blog/uat-in-the-uk-part-iii/

P.P.S Lots of info about how UAT and SkyDemon interact in this thread - https://forums.flyer.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=106968&start=105

8

OGN-R PilotAware / Monitoring Station Status

« on: April 09, 2018, 04:40:17 pm »

Hi All,

Has anyone written anything to monitor OGN-R station status?  Just found my station had stopped working, then found it hadn't been working since the end of Jan!  SDR dongle re seated, and all is now fine.

Something running centrally and emailing out once a day/week etc would seem helpful?

Cheers
Kev

9

OGN-R PilotAware / Flarm & PilotAware Reception Today - EGBKE

« on: November 24, 2017, 05:27:45 pm »

Hi

So, from starting out thinking my OGN-R was deaf, today was pretty good.  My first full day with the PilotAware aerial in a short conduit pole above the ridge line and the 9dbi Flarm aerial just 90% above the roof line and I am pretty pleased with the results.

Quoting absolute maximums is never the best, but getting FLARM reception at 70+ miles and PilotAware reception at 40 miles feels pretty good going.

PilotAware I can raise a little more, and getting more metal in the sky (without of course raising the Transmit gain to much) will help there.


Flarm, well, getting a peak of 24 aircraft received, and a SNR of +18 to +19 dB @ 10km doesn't need much work:

APRS <- EGBKE>APRS:>115138h v0.2.6.RPI-GPU CPU:2.3 RAM:290.0/970.5MB NTP:1.5ms/+0.0ppm +60.5C 24/24Acfts[1h] RF:+0+0.7ppm/-0.11dB/+18.0dB@10km[11422]/+19.0dB@10km[14/27]

Getting similar data to the above from PilotAware would be great.

Cheers
Kev

10

OGN-R PilotAware / Getting more receivers - 360Radar group

« on: October 26, 2017, 09:05:27 am »

Hi All

This is probably directed at Keith really, but if I post it here then the community can also help

I have been chatting to Philip Lee at 360Radar, he runs a community (https://www.facebook.com/groups/701885719892641/) that has 400+ ADSB receivers, mainly on Pi's, spread across the UK (https://mlat-server.co.uk/coverage/), mainly with the aim of filling in the Military gaps left by FlightRadar24 etc.

His users broadly follow the install instructions here (https://radar.lowflyingwales.co.uk/), which takes a vanilla Raspbian image, adds the SDR setup and then adds the MLAT client setup.

It should (famous last words) be relatively easy to get some of his users to follow the OGN installation instructions here (http://wiki.glidernet.org/wiki:raspberry-pi-installation), followed by the PilotAware installation instructions here (http://pilotaware.lode.co.uk/downloads/OGN/README.upgrade) to add both OGN and PilotAware functionality to their devices. 

The only addition to those instructions would be due to having two SDR dongles you need to tell the two RTLSDR programs to use the different dongles.  Info for example here (http://wiki.glidernet.org/multiple-receivers-configuration-on-raspi).

I can confirm that having OGN, PilotAware & ADSB, uploading to OGN, FR24 and 360Radar does indeed work, and I have been running like that for a couple of weeks (although only 1 decent antenna for P3I and Flarm at the moment, so I get good reception of one or the other, but not both, will be solved soon).

Philip is happy for us to talk to him more, but is cautious - if we break things he will get the support workload

Maybe the starting point is a post on the 360 group (with Phil's permission) asking if a few more technical users would be happy to work through it with us?

Obviously cost wise for the users it is a Bridge, a Dongle for OGN, a PilotAware Antenna and a Flarm Antenna.

(BTW, I have shown that the PilotAware antenna, the rubber duck, 10cm above the ridge line of the house gives darn good reception on Flarm without using the 9db Flarm antenna - http://flarmrange.onglide.com/?#EGBKE,max,d30,52.3227_-0.7062,9,#00990000:#009900ff,

I'm not sure what deal Keith is doing on Bridges and a couple of antennas

Anyway, enough rambling, thoughts?  Gotchas?

Cheers
Kev

11

OGN-R PilotAware / Radio Horizon / Radio Coverage

« on: October 13, 2017, 09:08:34 pm »

Just out of interest, I found this quite interesting:

http://lrcov.crc.ca/main/

A view of my coverage at 1,000ft attached.

Cheers
Kev

12

OGN-R PilotAware / New PAW / OGN station seems to be deaf to FLARM?

« on: September 18, 2017, 05:37:41 pm »

Hi

I have setup a brand new PAW / OGN station.  Pi 2 + Bridge + NESDR Dongle + follow the instructions for a fresh install of the combined PAW & OGN software.

It is called EGBKE and it is East of EGBK!

It can see Pilot Aware traffic (well my PAW box on the other side of the room anyway), but it hasn't seen any FLARM traffic all afternoon, despite some in the vicinity and being picked up by stations much further away.

I tried a reboot, I tried an update  (http://pilotaware.lode.co.uk/downloads/OGN/README.update), but no change.

I show up on all the OGN maps, but sometimes as Blue, not Green - which I think suggests a software version issue?  I can see my PAW box being uploaded to the OGN network.

Any ideas?

Thanks very much
Kev

8080:

Code: [Select]

RTLSDR OGN RF processor 0.2.6.RPI-GPU/Mar 31 2017

System
Host name ognpaw
Configuration file path+name /home/pi/rtlsdr-ogn-0.2.6/rtlsdr-ogn-paw.conf
Local time 16:35:39
Software 0.2.6.RPI-GPU
CPU load 0.0/0.2/0.4
RAM [free/total] 593.3/970.5 MB
CPU temperature +50.3 ℃
NTP UTC time 16:35:39
NTP est. error 25.6 ms
NTP freq. corr. -2.35 ppm
RTL-SDR device #0
Name Generic RTL2832U OEM
Tuner type R820T
Manufacturer Realtek
Product RTL2838UHIDIR
Serial 00000001
Center frequency 868.303 MHz
Sample rate 1.000 MHz
Frequency correction +0.6 ppm
Life Time 96.7% ppm
RTL Xtal 28.800000 MHz
Tuner Xtal 28.800000 MHz
RF
RF.FreqPlan 1: Europe/Africa
RF.Device 0
RF.SampleRate 1.0 MHz
RF.FreqCorr +0 ppm
RF.FreqRaster 28125 Hz
RF.OffsetTuning 0
Fine calib. FreqCorr +0.6 ppm
RF.PulseFilter.Threshold 0
RF.PulseFilter duty 0.0 ppm
RF.OGN.GainMode 1
RF.OGN.Gain 60.0 dB
RF.OGN.StartTime 0.375 sec
RF.OGN.SensTime 0.850 sec
RF.OGN.SaveRawData 0 sec
RF.GSM.CenterFreq 937.0 MHz
RF.GSM.Gain 35.0 dB
RF.GSM.SensTime 0.250 sec

8081:

Code: [Select]

RTLSDR OGN demodulator and decoder 0.2.6.RPI-GPU/Mar 31 2017

System
Host name ognpaw
Configuration file path+name /home/pi/rtlsdr-ogn-0.2.6/rtlsdr-ogn-paw.conf
Local time 16:36:32
Software RTLSDR-OGN 0.2.6.RPI-GPU
CPU load 0.6/0.3/0.4
RAM [free/total] 592.0/970.5 MB
CPU temperature +50.8 ℃
NTP UTC time 16:36:32
NTP est. error 25.6 ms
NTP freq. corr. -2.35 ppm
Position
Position.Latitude +52.32274 deg
Position.Longitude -000.70622 deg
Position.Altitude 92 m
Position.GeoidSepar +48 m
RF
RF.FreqPlan 1: Europe/Africa
RF input noise +0.6 dB
Demodulator
Demodulator.DetectSNR 10.0 dB
Demodulator.PipeName ogn-rf.fifo
Demodulator.ScanMargin 20.0 kHz
Traffic rates [visible/all]
Aircrafts received over last 12 hours 0/ 0
Aircrafts received over last hour 0/ 0
Aircrafts received over last minute 0/ 0
Positions received over last minute 0/ 0
APRS
APRS.Server[0] -> aprs.glidernet.org:14580
  connected to 85.188.1.173:14580
  connected for 00h38
  KiloBytes sent/received 1/9
APRS.Call EGBKE
APRS.Icon I&
APRS.FilterRange 0.0 km
APRS.Beacon.Interval 300 sec
APRS.Status.Interval 300 sec
APRS.MaxBitError 16 bit
APRS.HighResolution 1
APRS.SAR 1
APRS.PositionInterval 20 sec
APRS.MaxDistError 20 m
APRS.ReportDelay 5 sec
DDB
DDB.RefreshInterval 0
DDB.UseAsWhitelist 0

APRS beacon:
EGBKE>APRS:/163511h5219.36NI00042.37W&/A=000302

APRS status:
EGBKE>APRS:>163511h v0.2.6.RPI-GPU CPU:0.2 RAM:593.5/970.5MB NTP:25.6ms/-2.4ppm +50.3C 0/0Acfts[1h] RF:+0+0.6ppm/+0.25dB

8082:

Code: [Select]

Version 20170916 : Date 2017-09-18 16:36:58 : Station PWEGBKE
P3I Packets OK=1217 NG=68
ICAO Type Dist(KM) Alt(FT) Uplink
401292 PAW 0.00 288 -


13

General Discussion / 20160307 Questions

« on: April 10, 2016, 04:19:32 pm »

Hi

A few questions if I may re the latest version -

Does it still enable and use the ARF?  Whilst you are working hard on 'The Bridge' it would be nice to still be able to use the existing ARF's to see friends on an up coming trip.

Does the latest version have any of the 'bearing-less targets' functionality in?  I was flying with a friend today and could see them highlighted in Red or Amber at the top of  the 'non positional' targets list, but no info on SD that I saw.

How does the Group-ID and Flight-ID setting work, it isn't covered in the manual yet (that I could see), but sounds very useful for a group of aircraft flying together as I often do.

How do we know if a license key has been input correctly - I can't see any change if I put it in incorrectly?

Thanks very much in advance
Kev

14

General Discussion / PilotAware Latest Release 20150911

« on: September 12, 2015, 12:39:17 pm »

Hi

Thanks for the new version,  I note the added UDP functionality, does this break the ability for IOS to use Cellular for Internet whilst connected to the PilotAware WiFi network?

Thanks very much
Kevin