airtraffic

Author Topic: Pics from ham shack - KLKU, ADS-B, UAT  (Read 10454 times)

Offline johndball

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Pics from ham shack - KLKU, ADS-B, UAT
« on: April 16, 2024, 16:17:49 UTC »
My setup is certainly not as nice as some of these other, very professional builds, but hey, it gets me on the air. :-)

My rigs are setup in a gym which doubles as my ham shack. I have two Pi's: one for ADS-B 1080 and UAT 978, the other for LiveATC. Three antennas, not counting the HF radial antenna, and a fourth "spare" that isn't in use. The system connects to the internet through an air-gapped Ubiquiti U6 Pro to the main building via an outdoor Ubiquiti AC M Pro.

The HF antenna is mainly for ham radio use, but occasionally I'll tune in to the HF air bands when chatter is down on the ham bands. I control the ICOM 7300 through an HP computer running a remote control software - as long as I'm on my VPN, I can tune in to my HF antenna remotely and control it using an ICOM RC-28.

On top of the silo, I have a Davis Vantage Pro 2 weather station. It is also air-gapped to the main building. It's the last device to be relocated from the silo, mainly due to lightning, even with surge arrestors in place, but it's lasted about five years so it'll stay for now. One of the challenges was finding lighting arrestors that would work within the frequency bands of 978 and 1090 - I found that the Alpha Delta ATT3G50HP worked up to 3Ghz whereas the PolyPhaser IS-50UX-C0 only went up to 700Mhz.

The LiveATC Pi feeds KLKU (Louisa) and I'm close enough to pick up ground traffic and all traffic north, south, and east of the airport. Some west-bound traffic, but KLKU #2 is located west of the airport and has great coverage on that side. My wife and I are both pilots-in-training so it's nice to go back and listen to our radio traffic after a flight.

Just today, I've submitted a request to add 7W4 as well as air-to-air bands to the mix so we'll see how that goes when Dave and his crew has time (those folks are busy!).

Hope y'all enjoyed the explanation! 73's.
« Last Edit: April 16, 2024, 16:39:20 UTC by johndball »