Thanks to FlightAware and OBJ

[jepolch]

I was just looking at my VRS screen and I’m astounded at how many aircraft I’m seeing now. And interestingly, it seems like every other one is a 717, 727, DC-9, MD-80, CRJ - all these planes I never saw before are all over the map now! They were there, but I never saw them til you guys turned on the mlat. Thanks!

[obj]

Good that it’s working for you

I see the same sort of split in aircraft types over here - turn on mlat and suddenly your map is full of Flybe’s Dash-8s that you never saw before…

[Adraenyse]

Hear hear, thanks for all the hard effort.

Now only if my low and overs at CYEG would show up on VRS (boo Mode C).

Oh well I got some video of it tonight

[obj]

Mode A/C is an interesting puzzle for mlat that I will have to look at eventually. It’s not so directly useful for flight tracking as it’s ambiguous and there’s no aircraft identity other than the squawk which is not unique (and not even locally unique). But it’s useful in the sense that mlat should be able to put a marker on a map even if it doesn’t really know what’s there. The main challenge with the current code would be teaching it to handle multiple tracks without a way to distinguish them based on the message (i.e. “this squawk 7000 over here is actually a different aircraft to this other squawk 7000 that’s 5km away”)

[tjowen]

@obj

Mode A/C is an interesting puzzle for mlat that I will have to look at eventually. It’s not so directly useful for flight tracking as it’s ambiguous and there’s no aircraft identity other than the squawk which is not unique (and not even locally unique). But it’s useful in the sense that mlat should be able to put a marker on a map even if it doesn’t really know what’s there. The main challenge with the current code would be teaching it to handle multiple tracks without a way to distinguish them based on the message (i.e. “this squawk 7000 over here is actually a different aircraft to this other squawk 7000 that’s 5km away”)

Holy smokes!!! The shine isn’t even off MLAT and OBJ is already moving on, if only in thought. You remind me of an old technician course instructor that I had in circa 1980 who I blame for instilling the desire to continue learning, continue digging for the answer, just continue working…

Thanks for what you do OBJ, you’re an inspiration. And thanks to FA for giving you a platform.
…Tom

[K4AA]

+1 Joe K4AA

[antthomas]

Is it now possible to see MLAT planes on the dump1090 mutability web interface?

I’ve been compiling from the git source recently.

Is there a config setting I need to change? I’d like to see all the Flybe planes!

[obj]

If you have the latest from github it will show mlat planes in blue on the righthand table, and the detail pane when you select one will show the position is a mlat position.

[antthomas]

They still seem to be missing.

Built from source and installed the .deb

I’ve also cleared the html folder (as nothing seemed to be updated in there) and downloaded the git master source and copied everything from public_html into it. Web interface is up and running but no MLAT planes.

I must be missing a step here!

[obj]

Are you running piaware 2.1, and is it logging about receiving results in /tmp/piaware.out?
Is dump1090-mutability listening on port 30004?

[antthomas]

Looks like it is PiAware 2.0-7. I’ll get it upgraded.

[antthomas]

@obj

Are you running piaware 2.1, and is it logging about receiving results in /tmp/piaware.out?
Is dump1090-mutability listening on port 30004?

Everything updated, and a reboot and many of the white lines are now blue and I have MLAT planes. Great stuff obj!

[Adraenyse]

@obj

Mode A/C is an interesting puzzle for mlat that I will have to look at eventually. It’s not so directly useful for flight tracking as it’s ambiguous and there’s no aircraft identity other than the squawk which is not unique (and not even locally unique). But it’s useful in the sense that mlat should be able to put a marker on a map even if it doesn’t really know what’s there. The main challenge with the current code would be teaching it to handle multiple tracks without a way to distinguish them based on the message (i.e. “this squawk 7000 over here is actually a different aircraft to this other squawk 7000 that’s 5km away”)

I would just ignore 1200 straight up. That is never going to work well

[mduell]

@obj

Mode A/C is an interesting puzzle for mlat that I will have to look at eventually. It’s not so directly useful for flight tracking as it’s ambiguous and there’s no aircraft identity other than the squawk which is not unique (and not even locally unique). But it’s useful in the sense that mlat should be able to put a marker on a map even if it doesn’t really know what’s there. The main challenge with the current code would be teaching it to handle multiple tracks without a way to distinguish them based on the message (i.e. “this squawk 7000 over here is actually a different aircraft to this other squawk 7000 that’s 5km away”)

Also I think there’s an ambiguity if the code is a squawk or an encoded altitude - the interrogator knows what it asked for, but other receivers only hear the reply.

[azink]

Hey, now with MLAT enabled I can finally see (sort of) where that U2 that I always see on the Mode-C list flying around at FL600 is…

https://photos-6.dropbox.com/t/2/AADoI-SCELMo_GrOkHIsHuweldhLO38GlhBB4aLIFWPHmA/12/19290158/png/32x32/1/1436565600/0/2/Screenshot%202015-07-10%2013.26.24.png/CK6wmQkgASACIAMgBCAFIAYgBygBKAI/9F7Jy68mfSNKQK5vXRBNleRQGlQQA7mJFMcprpd8U1E?size=1280x960&size_mode=2

Hex: AE094A, Reg: 68-10331, Type: U2

[StephenWhitfield]

Any time scale on when their will be a release of an update of PiAware 1.20-1mu-1ubuntu1 to support mlat.