aleph nora @tindall@cybre.space

Built two antennas for passive radar. About 8dBi and a decent F/B ratio.

They're made of brass zip-tied to some fiberglass rods. Connecting the driven elements was a little annoying but it's working now.

Here's my GA trying to learn how to use a stack

Presented without comment. From "Wtf the fuck is Homestuck." @kinase

Rebirthday selfie time

Ya girl got her :estradiol_1mg:​

In fact does anyone know of a good teardown of this thing? I'd love to see the insides of it but I don't want to break mine open.

And here's what it looks like after running overnight!

All the planes in the region are studiously avoiding me

Now it draws tracks, too!

Finally some friggin planes

!!!! 144 kilometers! That's like way up past Madison!

Here's a screenshot, two aircraft tracks and another one just showed up

I'll leave it running all day tomorrow and (hopefully) get some good characterization of the receiver.

Quick analysis of my local noise floor for receiving ADS-B transmissions. I can see why 1090 is favoured by pilots.

My workspace, right now!

A fridge for drinks (water), a computer, a desk mic, a split keyboard, and a Logitech gaming mouse.

The fridge is a salvage from a dumpster; the computer is my #System76 #Thelio; the headphones are salvage from the campus recycling (microphone is broken).

On the right, you can see my ADS-B receiver. It's a RTL-SDR Blog #SDR dongle, v3. On my screen in Dump1090's display of my local area showing a few planes.

And of course my Domain of Science Map of Computer Science poster!

Here, I've zoomed in on the ATSC pilot, with each pixel showing just 500 Hz. The pilot is by far the brightest signal in this frequency range, though some video data is still visible higher in the spectrum.

This is what an American broadcast TV channel looks like! Specifically, channel 42, from 638 to 644 MHz. Each pixel in this picture is 4.8KHz by one second, colored by intensity.

On the left, you can see the ultra-bright ATSC pilot frequency. This is really useful; it's a very powerful radio "light" emitted by a huge tall tower, and it bounces off things!

Created with an RTL #SDR #Radio
and rtlpower.

Speaking of my RTL-SDR: here's a rtlpower analysis of the 1090 MHz band showing how smeared out the ADS-B Mode S transmissions are.

like I recognize that I'm a really annoying student but I want,,, to be able to do radio stuff

#SDR, or Software Defined #Radio, is awesome!

Here's my current setup with a 3rd generation RTL-SDR, a cheap USB software defined radio, using dump1090 to receive, decode, and error-correct the ADS-B Mode S transmissions from airplanes.

It then takes those decoded messages, collates them, and displays the results in the terminal and on a map via the Google Maps API.