Great video! One comment though, I used SkyVector to look up the frequencies for my local airport, Ronaldsway, Isle of Man (EGNS) and they were years out of date! The approach and tower frequencies changed in December 2014 but SkyVector are still showing the old ones.
Thanks for pointing that out @Jon Wornham. Folks, it is worth taking note of this. While a useful tool, SkyVector is not an official source, and may contain outdated information. I hope this is a one-off, but who knows? If others have time and already know their local frequencies, please check if SkyVector is up to date and let us know. Thanks.
Your series is really well done. Your information is presented so that novices can grasp the essence of what you are conveying. I have been monitoring aircraft since the late 1960s when I discovered the air band on my mom's Panasonic radio. I grew up in the flight path of ORD (O'Hare International Airport), a local Naval Air Station, and a regional airport (PWK) so there was literally aircraft over my house all day long everyday. Now, like you, I use a dongle (somewhat successfully) as well as a multitude of scanners to do my listening. Its never boring to me. Thanks for opening up the hobby to others.
working my way through. Im based near EGNV and was picking up EGNT approach too with a little maycom and a badly home made flowerpot dipole which was badly tuned. Ive bough a Nooelec dongle and a very nice mag based antenna for only ten quid. Cant wait to see what i get. If i can get EGNV tower, i will be over the knot!
Really enjoying these Frugal, I monitor the airways around Vancouver with an SBS3 radarbox, an AirNav radarbox and a Raspberry/SDR feeding FR24, and a Uniden scanner.
Another excellent video, its clear you put a lot of time, effort and research into these. You are becoming the go too channel for SDR and scanner related information, well done! As Dick Tracy would say 6-2 are even over and out!
This is really helpful! I’ve been listening to my local airport, but I haven’t really known how to identify what sort of role each transmission is playing, so this is really helpful for that!
In the days before the internet, a good way to find frequencies was to be near an airport and search the 121.xxx MHz range. All airports in the USA (and probably all of North America) have ground control in that range. Once you find ground control, monitor it and they will shortly hand off aircraft to the tower frequency. Tower will hand off to departure/approach, and departure will hand off to the next frequency. I did this many times when I traveled for work and spent a night at the airport hotel. I didn't know Laguardia had 3 ground frequencies!
Interestingly I find that my SDRs often have better reception than my scanners on VHF Air in my present location, especially the ones with good filters. The SDRs can also monitor multiple frequencies at once which is super helpful!
Another great Video, looking forward to the next in the series. So here in Aust out "Main" Airport ( YMML) many of the "Main" frequencies are re transmitted ( re broadcast ) either on the same frequency or a different frequency many 10's of, 100's of or in some cases even 1000 of km's away from the airport as they cover huge areas of Aust so for exzample if you look up Australian Air Traffic Control in wikipedia you will see the following. (I'd post the url but I know RUclips blocks posts with url's) Melbourne Centre The Melbourne ( YMML) FIR consists of all other Australian airspace outside the Brisbane FIR. This includes Victoria, Tasmania, southern New South Wales including Sydney, most of South Australia and the southern half of Western Australia. It also contains the Australian Indian and Southern Ocean airspace. Apart from international flights arriving from the Indian Ocean, most international flights will pass through Brisbane Centre first. However, as the FIR contains six of the eight capital cities, a very large portion of domestic flights are controlled from Melbourne Centre. Regards Wayne.
Hi Wayne. Thanks for continuing to watch. The ATC Centres usually have many remote transmitters around the FIR. When I lived in the UK there were 2 rebroadcast from a mountain 30 miles away, which provided me with great reception of a low level and a high level sector nearby. I'll cover this in the next episode!
i've been using skyvector for a while, it's an amazing site, specially bc i'm from north africa and coming across those maps for my place is impossible
@@FrugalRadio I cannot pick up the 128.000 frequency where I live unfortunately. My scanner picks up the odd transmission from an aircraft flying over coming in for arrival however . Anytime I pick someone up from the airport I like to get there early so that I can sit my my truck and listen around on the frequencies !
Always a good strategy Jordan. I do the same thing when picking people up. I usual even bring a scanner into the terminal as well. You should still be able to pick up the aircraft fine. Especially the ones lining up for landing on Rwy 20.
Good stuff, I'm still in ;) Going for a trip to Brisbane with the kit soon to have a nosy around. I'm a bit out in the sticks at home but my PiAware is picking up traffic 150nm out so that's pretty good.
@@FrugalRadio I've got 2 dongles now, one FlightAware for PiAware and an RTL-SDR for general work. Got it working on an old Android phone too. Good Stuff!
Great stuff indeed @Matt Crittenden. PiAware works pretty well with the FA dongle, and you can't beat an RTL-SDR for general use. Glad you're getting stuck in to the hobby. There will be a specific Flight Tracking episode later in the series too where we'll look at sharing data with multiple sites, and a couple of the less well-known options.
Good work sir! There's been a huge decrease in flights here. Still getting some cargo activity on the Anchorage - CONUS routes, most of the ATC is CPDLC though, so the radios seem eerily quiet.
Hi i want to ask, is it possible to hear airport comms in this range : distance 68 KM, my Elevation 40 M, airport elevation 10 M, and im using Dipole Antenna.
Most of the comms are going to be line of site. If you are high enough, and have no obstructions then it would be possible. It also depends what radios at the airport you are wanting to monitor. Airline crew might have a repeater set up, in which case the signal will travel further. Generally not 40+ km though, unless they have an antenna quite high up. With aircraft, you can receive them until close to landing, but depending where the approach & radar transmitters are located, it isn't likely you'll receive the air traffic controller.
Loving these, thank you so much! I've been listening to London FIS recently, and can receive aircraft from Cumbria to Kent. But what I find interesting is that I can hear the Controller too, from right here in Brum, while more local ground-to-air is completely inaccessible to me! Why is that, do you think? Keep up the quality work!
Paul, your question is a good one. And it will be answered in episode 3. That's when we will be looking at ATC Centres and talking about the controllers we can hear even when we can't pick up our local airports!
Lol! I was actually thinking of you when I used the Birmingham SID chart in the video, because I remembered you were in that are 😄 That said, it was a chart from 2004, so very out of date now!
I like to listen to distant airports. I can here planes at 38,000 feet from 400 km away. I always monitor "guard" at 121.5 All aircraft monitor guard frequency at all times. 123.450 is plane to plane communications.
Great video! I'm about 20 miles from the Edmonton International but I can't receive the ATIS signal on my RTL-SDR. I'd love to learn more about optimizing my setup. Are you using any filters to improve reception?
Hi Mark. Good to have another Edmontonian on the channel! A lot will depend on your antenna. Are you using the dipole kit, or an external antenna? If an external, is it a discone or an antenna tuned for airband? And yes, I use a filter. If you look at some of the previous videos you'll see which I use.
@@FrugalRadio I'm just using a TV antenna on my roof to play around with for now, I'm just starting in this hobby. I might need a more suitable antenna I guess. I did watch your video about sdr-trunk and managed to get it working to pick up AFRRCS. The TV antenna works great for that!
@Mark, that's interesting about the TV antenna. I tried a similar experiment once, although not with AFRRCS. For the aviation side of things we will have to get you hooked up with a more suitable antenna. There are a lot of reasons why the TV antenna is not going to offer good reception on airband. I try to do an episode on airband antennas in this series.
SkyVector frequency details are incorrect for Sri Lanka's Katunayake Airport (VCBI). VCBI has Airport approach - 132.400MHz Airport Tower - 118.700MHz Ground comm - 121.900MHz ATIS - 127.2MHz
Hi @Aviator747a, nice to see Canada being represented in the comments here :-) From an hour away you'd be out of luck for sure when it comes to hearing the controllers. Glad to hear that you are a FR24 contributor. What altitude do you lose the aircraft at as they approach the airports? Hopefully you still get some good traffic. CYEG has been very quiet lately. Took me ages to even get a Clearance Delivery sample recorded for this epsode!
@@FrugalRadio 1000' ish maybe. I would have to pay closer attention. My tower tops out at 40'. I am a ham as well. Do you stream to live atc being you can hear the tower?
Good to know @Aviator747a. Nice that you've got a tower. I'm licensed as well, although my hotspot hasn't worked in a few months, so I've not been on air. As for streaming, I've experimented with some. I was using 1 SDR to manage feeding 4 freqs simultaneously, but I am rearranging how the computers are set up and haven't got it online right now. I was thinking private feeds via Zello. Right now I just have one active feed to Zello, coming from one of the scanners.
200nm is good. I hosted one of the original FR24 boxes a number of years ago, before I started acquiring my own equipment. It's good that you're able to contribute by hosting a receiver.
Once I got curious for science to hear frs walkie talkie transmissions from a plane and booted up a walkie to listen only and was surprised to hear kids playing on frs walkie talkies far down on earth and amazed of what all I could hear all the way from space on nothing but a cheap amazon toyish walkie talkie! Makes me want to get one of those walkman type multiband radios that are recievers that can do VHS and UHF and listen to it on plane some day and not have to worry about accidentally TXing like on a regular walkie talkie.
Radios receive very well from height, that's for sure. In a plane they aren't usually great though. So much metal that not a lot of signal gets through unless you've got an antenna outside the aircraft.
No, the filter is only required if you have strong broadcast FM signals in your area. If you find such signals, or broadcast interference in the airband range, then you might want to pick up a filter. If there aren't many high powered broadcast transmitters around, you won't need a filter at all.
@@FrugalRadio thank you. I will wait and see if I need one. Now that I think of it there is a large FM radio station about 5 or 6 miles away that may cause some issues
I'm not sure which discone you are referring to. Generally they are designed as wide band receive antennas, although some handle transmission on amateur radio frequencies. Hopefully the specs will let you know.
@@FrugalRadio I was asking about antenna from your slide, this antennas are called discones, your antenna is probably from Moonraker, because even if other brands also offering this, Moonraker only have stand for internal use, I was thinking about buying this since I have about 30-40 km to nearest air port, was asking about TX since found info that it could TX but I was not sure...
Ok, thanks for the info. Basically discone antennas can work well, but if you want specifically to listen to 1 service, other types of antennas offer better performance. Be for transmitting I recommend using a different antenna, separated as far as possible from your receive antennas.
Depends where you are and what you want to hear. Personally, I used a commercial tri band Larson designed for 150 / 450 / 800. It does a fair job across those three bands. It is not that long, but works pretty well. I've also used standard amateur 2m / 70cm dual band antennas plenty of times. These have worked well for me too. A great mobile antenna is a quarterwave or halfwave whip tuned for the frequencies you're most interested in. Cheap, and works well.
Does anyone have experience with the FlightAware dongles? Is there anything about the FlightAware dongles that would make them a bad choice as a second dongle for trunked system monitoring?
@SDWNJ The FlightAware blue dongles have some filtering in them, designed to reduce the signal level on frequencies outside the 1090 MHz ADSB band. So they are not fully suitable for other frequencies. They may work, but signal strength would be lower, leading to difficulty decoding etc.
@@FrugalRadio OK, that's what I suspected. Thanks. BTW, have you thought about establishing a forum for viewers to interact with you and each other, like maybe a discord server?
Hi there. I am relatively new to airband radios and have had a Uniden ezi33xlt with a 40cm antenna for about 6 months. I live roughly 13 miles from LHR in a straight line and do not pick much up at all on 118.5(tower) or any of the other LHR frequencies for that matter. There are quite a lot of trees around and I don’t live in a very elevated area. Is that why I don’t pick much up? Would you recommend a different radio with a longer range than my current one?
Hi. Getting an antenna outside, or even up in the loft would probably make a bigger difference. You can make a simple air band dipole with a chocolate bloc terminal adapter, a cooker of pieces of wire, and some coax if you have those things around. Or you could try some of Darren's antennas that he makes for monitoring air band. He is some that connect directly to your scanner, but even better would be something like the slim Jim for hanging inside or in the loft. Receiving aircraft on the ground when talking to tower will be difficult from that distance. With a loft or roof antenna though you might hear the tower controller and the arriving / departing aircraft. You could also try the Heathrow Director frequency. If you were tempted to replace your radio, my recommendation would be for the Uniden 125XLT. It has a great reputation as an air band radio. I certainly enjoy mine (125AT which is the North American version of the same radio).
@@FrugalRadio I'm just kidding. The fact that the curvature of the earth can break line of sight communication is just another example for the flat earthers to consider.
You are more likely to find DMR at airports when it comes to digital modes. Airport police would be Tetra, but I haven't encountered airport staff using it. The aviation comms will be AM analog in the 118-137 MHz range.
I am a real novice. I want to know HOW do I get this voice and not what it is. It is assumed that readers know how to get voice. I only get crackles. I am not adjusting to the right parameter. I have the right frequency, tried WFM, played with gain, nothing.
For VHF air band communication, the mode used is AM. Aside from making sure you have an antenna hooked up, and your gain set, you shouldn't have much else to do. Most people find a gain of around 29-36 works well, however it will really depend on your antenna location, how far from the transmitter you are, the quality of your coax, the type of SDR you have, local interference etc. Unfortunately everyone's situation is different so it is hard to give exact instructions.
Great video! One comment though, I used SkyVector to look up the frequencies for my local airport, Ronaldsway, Isle of Man (EGNS) and they were years out of date! The approach and tower frequencies changed in December 2014 but SkyVector are still showing the old ones.
Thanks for pointing that out @Jon Wornham. Folks, it is worth taking note of this. While a useful tool, SkyVector is not an official source, and may contain outdated information. I hope this is a one-off, but who knows?
If others have time and already know their local frequencies, please check if SkyVector is up to date and let us know. Thanks.
Same here I found they hadn’t changed a few frequencies in my area.
Same here, i have been wasting time searching for frequencies but they moved out higher than the old ones.
Your series is really well done. Your information is presented so that novices can grasp the essence of what you are conveying. I have been monitoring aircraft since the late 1960s when I discovered the air band on my mom's Panasonic radio. I grew up in the flight path of ORD (O'Hare International Airport), a local Naval Air Station, and a regional airport (PWK) so there was literally aircraft over my house all day long everyday. Now, like you, I use a dongle (somewhat successfully) as well as a multitude of scanners to do my listening. Its never boring to me. Thanks for opening up the hobby to others.
I appreciate your kind comments @Joe Rotman. Great to hear some of your radio story too. I agree, it is never boring when you have radios 😄
working my way through. Im based near EGNV and was picking up EGNT approach too with a little maycom and a badly home made flowerpot dipole which was badly tuned. Ive bough a Nooelec dongle and a very nice mag based antenna for only ten quid. Cant wait to see what i get. If i can get EGNV tower, i will be over the knot!
Really enjoying these Frugal, I monitor the airways around Vancouver with an SBS3 radarbox, an AirNav radarbox and a Raspberry/SDR feeding FR24, and a Uniden scanner.
Great setup @David Gmail. Nice to meet a fellow contributor and enthusiast. Welcome to the channel!
Another excellent video, its clear you put a lot of time, effort and research into these. You are becoming the go too channel for SDR and scanner related information, well done! As Dick Tracy would say 6-2 are even over and out!
Thanks Mark. The wife would say I put in way to much time 😉. But I can't seem to help myself!
Great video and series, very useful information. Well done and thank you !
Thank you Patrick.
Another great video. Keep up your great work informing us about this great hobby
Will do 😄
Very clear and useful information with included links. Thanks again for the nice video. I look forward to episode 3!
Thanks Ron.
This is really helpful! I’ve been listening to my local airport, but I haven’t really known how to identify what sort of role each transmission is playing, so this is really helpful for that!
Good, glad it can help you make sense of the signals you can receive 😄
What a great video - really informative and well put together. Thank you.
Thanks @captainvice69, I appreciate your comments.
Absolutely brilliant video great information for beginners.
Thanks Doc G!
In the days before the internet, a good way to find frequencies was to be near an airport and search the 121.xxx MHz range. All airports in the USA (and probably all of North America) have ground control in that range. Once you find ground control, monitor it and they will shortly hand off aircraft to the tower frequency. Tower will hand off to departure/approach, and departure will hand off to the next frequency.
I did this many times when I traveled for work and spent a night at the airport hotel.
I didn't know Laguardia had 3 ground frequencies!
Excellent tip!
Thanks! This is one area that I have not explored much on my SDR, even though I have heard some via scanners.
Interestingly I find that my SDRs often have better reception than my scanners on VHF Air in my present location, especially the ones with good filters. The SDRs can also monitor multiple frequencies at once which is super helpful!
Wow! I had no idea how complicated air radio is.
Another great Video, looking forward to the next in the series.
So here in Aust out "Main" Airport ( YMML) many of the "Main" frequencies are re transmitted ( re broadcast ) either on the same frequency or a different frequency many 10's of, 100's of or in some cases even 1000 of km's away from the airport as they cover huge areas of Aust so for exzample if you look up Australian Air Traffic Control in wikipedia you will see the following.
(I'd post the url but I know RUclips blocks posts with url's)
Melbourne Centre
The Melbourne ( YMML) FIR consists of all other Australian airspace outside the Brisbane FIR. This includes Victoria, Tasmania, southern New South Wales including Sydney, most of South Australia and the southern half of Western Australia. It also contains the Australian Indian and Southern Ocean airspace. Apart from international flights arriving from the Indian Ocean, most international flights will pass through Brisbane Centre first. However, as the FIR contains six of the eight capital cities, a very large portion of domestic flights are controlled from Melbourne Centre.
Regards
Wayne.
Hi Wayne. Thanks for continuing to watch.
The ATC Centres usually have many remote transmitters around the FIR. When I lived in the UK there were 2 rebroadcast from a mountain 30 miles away, which provided me with great reception of a low level and a high level sector nearby.
I'll cover this in the next episode!
i've been using skyvector for a while, it's an amazing site, specially bc i'm from north africa and coming across those maps for my place is impossible
Definitely a great resource!
Excellent video. I live near the Atlanta airport and this information is very helpful.
I expect there are a lot of comms at KATL you could receive. Enjoy exploring those airwaves!
This is a great series ! Loving every minute 👍
Thanks Jordan. I think you're a little further north than me. Can you pick up any of the ATC transmissions from YEG?
@@FrugalRadio I cannot pick up the 128.000 frequency where I live unfortunately. My scanner picks up the odd transmission from an aircraft flying over coming in for arrival however . Anytime I pick someone up from the airport I like to get there early so that I can sit my my truck and listen around on the frequencies !
Always a good strategy Jordan. I do the same thing when picking people up. I usual even bring a scanner into the terminal as well.
You should still be able to pick up the aircraft fine. Especially the ones lining up for landing on Rwy 20.
Good stuff, I'm still in ;) Going for a trip to Brisbane with the kit soon to have a nosy around. I'm a bit out in the sticks at home but my PiAware is picking up traffic 150nm out so that's pretty good.
That's great Matt. There's certainly lots of fun to be had when taking your SDR kit mobile. I never travel without one any more!
@@FrugalRadio I've got 2 dongles now, one FlightAware for PiAware and an RTL-SDR for general work. Got it working on an old Android phone too. Good Stuff!
Great stuff indeed @Matt Crittenden. PiAware works pretty well with the FA dongle, and you can't beat an RTL-SDR for general use. Glad you're getting stuck in to the hobby. There will be a specific Flight Tracking episode later in the series too where we'll look at sharing data with multiple sites, and a couple of the less well-known options.
@@FrugalRadio Logging my flights via Virtual Radar too, interesting to see the traffic over time ...
Good work sir! There's been a huge decrease in flights here. Still getting some cargo activity on the Anchorage - CONUS routes, most of the ATC is CPDLC though, so the radios seem eerily quiet.
That was really informative! Thanks!
You're welcome!
Thank you for this! Will try to listen on aviation frequencies near my area. ❤️
Hopefully you're close enough to hear some good comms!
@@FrugalRadio yup, need to adjust my antenna, if I can pick up an ATIS then it’ll be good to go
I'm about 6 or 7 miles from a small general aviation airport, so I'll have to see what I can listen in on from there.
Excellent! I'll be covering a bit more about GA in the next episode.
excellent vidio and fun information....thank you!!!
Thanks for your comment Mike.
Great video. Good information.
Thanks
You're welcome. Thanks for watching the channel!
Fantastic video!!!!
Thank you.
Thank you for a really good and informative video
No problem!
Very informative video, thank you!
You're welcome!
Hi i want to ask, is it possible to hear airport comms in this range : distance 68 KM, my Elevation 40 M, airport elevation 10 M, and im using Dipole Antenna.
Most of the comms are going to be line of site. If you are high enough, and have no obstructions then it would be possible.
It also depends what radios at the airport you are wanting to monitor. Airline crew might have a repeater set up, in which case the signal will travel further. Generally not 40+ km though, unless they have an antenna quite high up.
With aircraft, you can receive them until close to landing, but depending where the approach & radar transmitters are located, it isn't likely you'll receive the air traffic controller.
Very useful. Thank you.
You're welcome Perry.
Loving these, thank you so much! I've been listening to London FIS recently, and can receive aircraft from Cumbria to Kent. But what I find interesting is that I can hear the Controller too, from right here in Brum, while more local ground-to-air is completely inaccessible to me! Why is that, do you think? Keep up the quality work!
Paul, your question is a good one.
And it will be answered in episode 3. That's when we will be looking at ATC Centres and talking about the controllers we can hear even when we can't pick up our local airports!
@@FrugalRadio Can't say fairer than that! You know how to create an air of suspense!
Lol! I was actually thinking of you when I used the Birmingham SID chart in the video, because I remembered you were in that are 😄 That said, it was a chart from 2004, so very out of date now!
I like to listen to distant airports. I can here planes at 38,000 feet from 400 km away. I always monitor "guard" at 121.5 All aircraft monitor guard frequency at all times. 123.450 is plane to plane communications.
Great to hear you're enjoying monitoring. There's usually plenty of aviation comms to monitor.
Great video! I'm about 20 miles from the Edmonton International but I can't receive the ATIS signal on my RTL-SDR. I'd love to learn more about optimizing my setup. Are you using any filters to improve reception?
Hi Mark. Good to have another Edmontonian on the channel!
A lot will depend on your antenna. Are you using the dipole kit, or an external antenna? If an external, is it a discone or an antenna tuned for airband?
And yes, I use a filter. If you look at some of the previous videos you'll see which I use.
@@FrugalRadio I'm just using a TV antenna on my roof to play around with for now, I'm just starting in this hobby. I might need a more suitable antenna I guess. I did watch your video about sdr-trunk and managed to get it working to pick up AFRRCS. The TV antenna works great for that!
@Mark, that's interesting about the TV antenna. I tried a similar experiment once, although not with AFRRCS. For the aviation side of things we will have to get you hooked up with a more suitable antenna. There are a lot of reasons why the TV antenna is not going to offer good reception on airband.
I try to do an episode on airband antennas in this series.
SkyVector frequency details are incorrect for Sri Lanka's Katunayake Airport (VCBI). VCBI has
Airport approach - 132.400MHz
Airport Tower - 118.700MHz
Ground comm - 121.900MHz
ATIS - 127.2MHz
I love listening to military Airband
Which forces do you usually monitor?
Great video
Thanks
Nice, another fellow Canuck channel. I am an hour away from CYOW AND CYUL. Just a bit too far to hear coms. I have a FR24 rx here.
Hi @Aviator747a, nice to see Canada being represented in the comments here :-)
From an hour away you'd be out of luck for sure when it comes to hearing the controllers. Glad to hear that you are a FR24 contributor. What altitude do you lose the aircraft at as they approach the airports? Hopefully you still get some good traffic. CYEG has been very quiet lately. Took me ages to even get a Clearance Delivery sample recorded for this epsode!
@@FrugalRadio 1000' ish maybe. I would have to pay closer attention. My tower tops out at 40'. I am a ham as well. Do you stream to live atc being you can hear the tower?
Good to know @Aviator747a. Nice that you've got a tower. I'm licensed as well, although my hotspot hasn't worked in a few months, so I've not been on air.
As for streaming, I've experimented with some. I was using 1 SDR to manage feeding 4 freqs simultaneously, but I am rearranging how the computers are set up and haven't got it online right now. I was thinking private feeds via Zello. Right now I just have one active feed to Zello, coming from one of the scanners.
@@FrugalRadio I need to get a dedicated discone for sdr play up. My FR24 rx is from FR themselves. I reach out to 200 NM and a shade over.
200nm is good. I hosted one of the original FR24 boxes a number of years ago, before I started acquiring my own equipment. It's good that you're able to contribute by hosting a receiver.
great video thanks
Thanks Eddie.
Once I got curious for science to hear frs walkie talkie transmissions from a plane and booted up a walkie to listen only and was surprised to hear kids playing on frs walkie talkies far down on earth and amazed of what all I could hear all the way from space on nothing but a cheap amazon toyish walkie talkie!
Makes me want to get one of those walkman type multiband radios that are recievers that can do VHS and UHF and listen to it on plane some day and not have to worry about accidentally TXing like on a regular walkie talkie.
Radios receive very well from height, that's for sure. In a plane they aren't usually great though. So much metal that not a lot of signal gets through unless you've got an antenna outside the aircraft.
is the flamingo fm filter a must if wanting to monitor air band? i have an airport a few miles away
also i will be using the rtl-sdr blog v3
No, the filter is only required if you have strong broadcast FM signals in your area. If you find such signals, or broadcast interference in the airband range, then you might want to pick up a filter.
If there aren't many high powered broadcast transmitters around, you won't need a filter at all.
@@FrugalRadio thank you. I will wait and see if I need one. Now that I think of it there is a large FM radio station about 5 or 6 miles away that may cause some issues
I have question for you, this discone antenna from vid IT is only RX antenna od also could be for TX?
I'm not sure which discone you are referring to. Generally they are designed as wide band receive antennas, although some handle transmission on amateur radio frequencies. Hopefully the specs will let you know.
@@FrugalRadio I was asking about antenna from your slide, this antennas are called discones, your antenna is probably from Moonraker, because even if other brands also offering this, Moonraker only have stand for internal use, I was thinking about buying this since I have about 30-40 km to nearest air port, was asking about TX since found info that it could TX but I was not sure...
Ok, thanks for the info. Basically discone antennas can work well, but if you want specifically to listen to 1 service, other types of antennas offer better performance. Be for transmitting I recommend using a different antenna, separated as far as possible from your receive antennas.
What do you think is the best mobile antenna for out and about.
Depends where you are and what you want to hear.
Personally, I used a commercial tri band Larson designed for 150 / 450 / 800. It does a fair job across those three bands. It is not that long, but works pretty well. I've also used standard amateur 2m / 70cm dual band antennas plenty of times. These have worked well for me too.
A great mobile antenna is a quarterwave or halfwave whip tuned for the frequencies you're most interested in. Cheap, and works well.
What airport is that landing footage at the end from? I think I recognize it from Microsoft Flight Simulator!
It is Madeira, a Portuguese island.
@@FrugalRadio YES! I did that landing challenge in the sim. Cool!
Broadswood Antennas can i put them in my suitcase
Yes you can. I've also taken them in my carry on.
Does anyone have experience with the FlightAware dongles? Is there anything about the FlightAware dongles that would make them a bad choice as a second dongle for trunked system monitoring?
@SDWNJ The FlightAware blue dongles have some filtering in them, designed to reduce the signal level on frequencies outside the 1090 MHz ADSB band. So they are not fully suitable for other frequencies. They may work, but signal strength would be lower, leading to difficulty decoding etc.
@@FrugalRadio OK, that's what I suspected. Thanks.
BTW, have you thought about establishing a forum for viewers to interact with you and each other, like maybe a discord server?
@SDWNJ, I have been thinking about setting up a forum, yes. A few people have mentioned it, so it is a possibility for sure.
Is that a software to hear frequencies, what's the name of it
That was SDRUno - a companion software to SDRPlay devices like the well-respected RSP units.
I live close to the airport but I get a fair bit of static noise
What is your receiving equipment @Hazza?
Hi there. I am relatively new to airband radios and have had a Uniden ezi33xlt with a 40cm antenna for about 6 months. I live roughly 13 miles from LHR in a straight line and do not pick much up at all on 118.5(tower) or any of the other LHR frequencies for that matter. There are quite a lot of trees around and I don’t live in a very elevated area. Is that why I don’t pick much up? Would you recommend a different radio with a longer range than my current one?
Hi. Getting an antenna outside, or even up in the loft would probably make a bigger difference. You can make a simple air band dipole with a chocolate bloc terminal adapter, a cooker of pieces of wire, and some coax if you have those things around. Or you could try some of Darren's antennas that he makes for monitoring air band. He is some that connect directly to your scanner, but even better would be something like the slim Jim for hanging inside or in the loft.
Receiving aircraft on the ground when talking to tower will be difficult from that distance. With a loft or roof antenna though you might hear the tower controller and the arriving / departing aircraft. You could also try the Heathrow Director frequency.
If you were tempted to replace your radio, my recommendation would be for the Uniden 125XLT. It has a great reputation as an air band radio. I certainly enjoy mine (125AT which is the North American version of the same radio).
But the Earth is flat 🤔
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🙈🤣
Hmm....
@@FrugalRadio I'm just kidding. The fact that the curvature of the earth can break line of sight communication is just another example for the flat earthers to consider.
I thought these were tetra radios these days, just bought a cheap radio we shall see lol, miss hearing what is happening when aircraft landing etc.
You are more likely to find DMR at airports when it comes to digital modes. Airport police would be Tetra, but I haven't encountered airport staff using it.
The aviation comms will be AM analog in the 118-137 MHz range.
1:14 Proof that the earth is not flat =
Lol
I am a real novice. I want to know HOW do I get this voice and not what it is. It is assumed that readers know how to get voice. I only get crackles. I am not adjusting to the right parameter. I have the right frequency, tried WFM, played with gain, nothing.
For VHF air band communication, the mode used is AM. Aside from making sure you have an antenna hooked up, and your gain set, you shouldn't have much else to do. Most people find a gain of around 29-36 works well, however it will really depend on your antenna location, how far from the transmitter you are, the quality of your coax, the type of SDR you have, local interference etc. Unfortunately everyone's situation is different so it is hard to give exact instructions.
No knowledgeable person uses 'Over and Out' consecutively as they conflict.
Yes, you are correct. It's just for fun, and not for real life 😉
Good information, location Chennai India VOMM. Flightradar24 nod F-VOMM2. THANKS
No this video wasn't helpful
What did you hope to learn that the video failed to provide?