Interesting ADS-B broadcasts... What are they?

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
1

I have my Pi running dump1090 with the --write-json flag, and then I have a Python script that opens the json file and copies it to a file if there is any aircraft. I have had it running for the past day and a half, and I am seeing some very interesting enteries. Such as:

{ "now" : 1745564263.9,
  "messages" : 139804,
  "aircraft" : [
    {"hex":"000000","squawk":"1400","altitude":123100,"mlat":[],"tisb":[],"messages":2,"seen":22.6,"rssi":-44.3}
  ]
}

{ "now" : 1745565735.7,
  "messages" : 140199,
  "aircraft" : [
    {"hex":"738a69","squawk":"4142","flight":"IRON    ","altitude":30075,"vert_rate":0,"category":"A3","mlat":[],"tisb":[],"messages":393,"seen":48.0,"rssi":-31.9}
  ]
}

Are these spoofed? Or an actual broadcast from 120,000 feet and a flight named ā€˜IRONā€™?

2

Military flights are usually running with some ā€œcreativeā€ names. Nothing unusual. The hex code is linked to an Israeli Gulfstream with some ā€œspecial featuresā€. Typically a radar/surveillance aircraft:

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The first one is either a blocked aircraft/baloon etc. or it is simply wrong data.

3

Are aircraft/balloons at 120,000 being detected on ADS-B a common occurence? And same for data being incorrect.

4

Yes, Balloons are sometimes detected. What suspicious is the missing HEX code

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5

So what do you think it may be?

6

Can be anything.

Weak signal, incorrect data, blocked aircraftā€¦

7

What does blocked aircraft mean, that they intentionally obfuscate their signal?

8

yes

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9

Meaning they are at 123,000 feet an obfuscating their signal? Or they are obfuscating everything including their altitude.

I assume the following is not the case, but the day that I recorded that the Houthis hit Ben Gurion airport with an ICBM (Iā€™m in Israel), it would be mad cool if either their missile or the Israeli or American interceptors have ADS-B - but I doubt it, I canā€™t imagine that there would be any utility for them, and it would only expose them for people to track/see.

10

Blocked aircraft are usually on request of the owner of the aircraft or helicopter, or balloon. Usually Government, Law enforcement, airforce, army can request to hide the details of their flights including altitude, callsign etc.
FA and FR24 block aircraft on request, also private owners can ask to be blocked.

Missies arenā€™t equiped with any kind of transponder as far as I know, they will have some GPS locator card , maybe the commercial ones do have something different system to track them when they return to Earth but I doubt that they are using ADSB or another open transmission protocol.

11

I received this using dump1090, so any blocking would have had to be them giving a false altitude.

I also had a plane jump to -1000 feet yesterdayā€¦ Iā€™m thinking that it may have something to do with the GPS jamming going on around these parts.

12

ADS-B signals are travelling hundreds of miles across the atmosphere. Things can happen all the time.
See also the thread about interferences where receivers are getting signals which are coming from an area twice the max range of a receiver depending on the weather, e.g. this one:

Nice bit of tropo over the UK and Europe today - FlightAware / ADS-B Flight Tracking - FlightAware Discussions

13

Itā€™s 2 messages ā€¦ just assume itā€™s noise getting decoded which it very very likely is and move on.

The callsign being IRON is not very surprising at all to me.
The military uses all kinds of callsigns.

2 Likes
14

Good point about the 2 messages. Yesterday I got hex 000000 at 56,3000 feet, too, Iā€™ll check how many messages that was.

Yesterday I also saw an airliner jump from 12,000 to 59,3000 feet (when it was at -1000 it didnā€™t say the flight, but it was the same hex that had just been detected at 12,000 feet). And there was also a plane that jumped down to -1000 feet. Do you think thatā€™s also a decoding problem, or is it more likely jamming?

15

Huh, very interesting. Thanks!

16

You are seeing the effect of jamming is my expectation. :wink:

1 Like