I’m still getting familiar with data feeding, so wondering why this aircraft constantly shows in my live stats.
Its on the ground, landed 4 four months ago and is around 2,000 miles from my location and I’m receiving thousands of messages from it. My home made coax collinear is good, but not that good.
There are many of these ground stations around the UK, you live quite close to ‘TXLU01’ located at Bardon Hill near Coalville. It transmits 24 hours a day, but may come and go depending on atmospherics
I want to know why the Ground Stations are not plotted in PiAware, so we can see where they are? They plot on my other Mode-S software, PlanePlotter . .
Thinking I could do a bit of research myself about ‘ground stations’ I googled for ‘TXLU01 ground station’ and the only hit was this thread. I’ll have look at PlanePlotter.
If you’re receiving position data, they’ll show a position on skyaware.
If they’re not showing a position on skyaware, you’re not receiving position data.
I execute Virtual Radar Server connected to Port 30005, Beast format
As you can see below, the Ground Station is showing on the VRS map and listed with positional data, and not showing on the PiAware map, but showing in the list . Is PiAware rejecting the target because it is stationary and sending the same position repeatedly? There must be an explanation why PlanePlotter and VRS detect and plot, but PiAware rejects plotting?
Do you have your receiver location set in dump1090?
Ground position decoding requires knowledge of a reference position somewhere in the same region as the position, either the receiver location or a recent airborne position. If neither of these are available, dump1090 can’t unambiguously decode ground position messages.
(the ground position encoding does not transmit some of the most significant bits of the position, so on the receiver side it decodes to 8 possible locations, separated by 90 degrees of latitude/longitude; having a reference position lets us pick the nearest of those 8)
I have the PiAware feeding into VRS port 30005 beast mode too. I can see this in the list but not on the VRS map. It seams to be producing a fairly strong signal at my location which is quite close to you. Just a little surprised it shows up on your map and not mine. I don’t have it set to only show aircraft with position data only either.
The ground stations only show for a short time on VRS, then disappear. I think it’s linked to time out settings in VRS, if the target doesn’t move it is deleted after a set time which can be changed - I think!
Aha I see, that explains it then as I think I have been seeing it on the lists here (VR) for a week or more now, so likely I just didn’t notice it on the map when it first appeared.
If they have an aircraft in for maintenance, these systems will power up if they are being maintained. Generally, they will be turned off but you may find lazy maintenance staff on occasion.
Just tested the time out options in VRS, if you go to Tools > Options > General and increase the Remove from display and Remove from tracking numbers to a much larger value, your ground stations will remain plotted on the map
I think when this did appear on a map it seems to be near a farm and small industrial complex so I’m not sure if that’s the case here. Unless the kit is taken off the aircraft and maybe serviced near this location. Of course there is a possibility the location indicated may be erroneous.