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Author Topic: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)  (Read 4796 times)

Offline JetScan1

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new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« on: October 29, 2020, 10:12:37 AM »
Thanks for the new ZAN feed at Bethel, great location covers a lot of airspace not covered over on the Kodiak ZAN feed (too bad you couldn't split that one).

Is this an SDR setup ? Just wondering if it would be easy to add another separate feed covering the high sectors there on 127.500 and 351.850 ? Should have controller reception I think ? I'm not sure how busy those high sectors are so if its a scanner I don't know if it would be a good idea to add them to the current feed ? They seem to be combined on the off peak times anyway.

JS



Offline dave

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #1 on: October 29, 2020, 01:04:01 PM »
Thanks for the new ZAN feed at Bethel, great location covers a lot of airspace not covered over on the Kodiak ZAN feed (too bad you couldn't split that one).

Is this an SDR setup ? Just wondering if it would be easy to add another separate feed covering the high sectors there on 127.500 and 351.850 ? Should have controller reception I think ? I'm not sure how busy those high sectors are so if its a scanner I don't know if it would be a good idea to add them to the current feed ? They seem to be combined on the off peak times anyway.

JS

It is an SDR setup, yes. I now have the ZAN feed there in stereo (all we can do right now due to lack of more SDRs) with 125.2 on the left and 127.5. I don't see the listing for 127.5 at that RCAG anywhere. Where did you find that?

No ability to add the Uniform side right now. Probably not used very much. :-)

Offline dave

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #2 on: October 29, 2020, 01:09:22 PM »
Also note that this village has frequent scheduled power outages and even though the SDR system is on solar/wind power, the internet that feeds the village fails pretty quickly. So several hour outages will not be uncommon.


Offline JetScan1

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #3 on: October 29, 2020, 02:26:34 PM »
dave,

Quote
I now have the ZAN feed there in stereo (all we can do right now due to lack of more SDRs) with 125.2 on the left and 127.5.

Thanks, sounds like good controller reception on 127.500. Those stereo feeds are handy when listening to the archives using Audacity, makes it easy to see when the sectors are combined.

Quote
I don't see the listing for 127.5 at that RCAG anywhere. Where did you find that?

It's published, on the High Altitude chart AH-1 and in the FAA AFF database.

Quote
No ability to add the Uniform side right now. Probably not used very much.

Most of the military traffic I suspect would be on the low side, but we'll see. Some high altitude Coronet West Traffic, maybe catch some F-22s scrambling to meet the Russian Bombers ?

https://tinyurl.com/yyzclprw

JS

Offline dave

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #4 on: October 29, 2020, 05:00:57 PM »
Quote
Most of the military traffic I suspect would be on the low side, but we'll see. Some high altitude Coronet West Traffic, maybe catch some F-22s scrambling to meet the Russian Bombers ?

Depends on where they're scrambling from. Our aircraft pickup range certainly wouldn't have allowed picking up those fighter jets in that scramble. Way too far away.

Offline JetScan1

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #5 on: October 29, 2020, 05:27:46 PM »
Quote
Our aircraft pickup range certainly wouldn't have allowed picking up those fighter jets in that scramble. Way too far away.

Sorry what I meant was being able to hear the controller that would be working those flights.

Just checking the archives the last few hours and there is nothing on the low frequency 125.200 now ? The high 127.500 is coming through okay. Feed issue ?

 

Offline dave

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #6 on: October 29, 2020, 05:31:53 PM »
Quote
Our aircraft pickup range certainly wouldn't have allowed picking up those fighter jets in that scramble. Way too far away.

Sorry what I meant was being able to hear the controller that would be working those flights.

Just checking the archives the last few hours and there is nothing on the low frequency 125.200 now ? The high 127.500 is coming through okay. Feed issue ?

Misconfiguration. But something else just happened on the Raspberry Pi - card may have gotten corrupted....will have to see after a reboot. Unusual occurrence.

Offline dave

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #7 on: October 29, 2020, 05:52:19 PM »
Reboot fixed it...the rolling power blackouts can and may cause issues from time to time. 

125.2 issue fixed as well. Thanks for catching that.

Offline dave

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #8 on: October 29, 2020, 06:00:37 PM »
Both channels are hopping now.

Offline JetScan1

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #9 on: October 29, 2020, 07:52:49 PM »
Quote
Both channels are hopping now.

Sounds good. Checking the archives at the time they had 3 high sectors combined, 63+68+69, basically to the west, southwest, southeast of Anchorage. The northern high/low, sector 04, wasn't included.

That northern sector 04 used to be covered on the Deadhorse feed "PASC CTAF/Unicom/AFIS/App" on 134.400. It's still listed but I have not heard it lately. Did you take it off intentionally or did it get dropped by mistake ? Having it back would fill in the ZAN coverage to the north, when it's not combined with sector 63 (Bethel RCAG).


Offline Bob2

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #10 on: October 30, 2020, 04:01:51 AM »
Thanks for the feed from Bethel and for getting the stereo channels fixed quickly.

To make more sense of what might be heard, regarding sector combinations, at least as of 2014 sector 04 would not combine with 63/68/69, but is part of the work area that includes the Low sector at Bethel.

Reference: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/mission_support/ato_intl/cross_polar/

Scroll down to: All papers currently available for CPWG17 (zip), see CPWG17_ZAN_ANSP_Briefing.pdf, pages 7-9.  I haven't looked at the dozens of PDFs from more recent years to see if there is updated work area information.  More current sector boundaries are in CPWG23, CPWG23_IP04_Implementation_of_ATOP_in_the_Anchorage_Arctic_FIR_ver3.pdf

The work areas appear to be North - 03/04/09/13/15/16, East - 05/06/07/08/14, High - 10/11/63/68/69.

Offline Bob2

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #11 on: October 30, 2020, 04:22:14 AM »
Oops. "East" area should say "South".

Offline JetScan1

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #12 on: October 30, 2020, 11:10:11 AM »
Bob2,

Thanks, lots of good info. in those links. Those yearly ZAN Cross Polar Group presentations seem to be the best source for sector charts, although they don't always include them, or like the last one (2019) it was too blurry to read the details. It looks like they made a few tweaks to the High Specialty giving some airspace to the Oceanic sector to the west, I noticed this as well with some of the frequency handoffs heard from the Bethel high feed the last couple of days.

Quote
04 would not combine with 63/68/69, but is part of the work area that includes the Low sector at Bethel.

I seem to recall they would combine them when traffic was really light on weekends, but maybe not ? They had 04 on the Bethel Low this morning when I checked the 1200 UTC archive. It would be nice to get 134.400 back on the Deadhorse feed for 04 coverage H24.

« Last Edit: October 30, 2020, 12:08:05 PM by JetScan1 »

Offline dave

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #13 on: October 30, 2020, 11:22:04 AM »
Sounds good. Checking the archives at the time they had 3 high sectors combined, 63+68+69, basically to the west, southwest, southeast of Anchorage. The northern high/low, sector 04, wasn't included.

That northern sector 04 used to be covered on the Deadhorse feed "PASC CTAF/Unicom/AFIS/App" on 134.400. It's still listed but I have not heard it lately. Did you take it off intentionally or did it get dropped by mistake ? Having it back would fill in the ZAN coverage to the north, when it's not combined with sector 63 (Bethel RCAG).

Dropped by mistake. This is not an SDR setup. I will check on this and see about adding an SDR there to have some control and separation.

Dave
« Last Edit: October 30, 2020, 11:42:39 AM by dave »

Offline JetScan1

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #14 on: October 30, 2020, 11:41:34 AM »
Quote
This is note an SDR setup. I will check on this and see about adding an SDR there to have some control and separation.

Thanks for checking. Now I'm getting greedy, but an SDR feed at Kodiak would be nice too, split 3 ways with local/low/high separated.

Offline dave

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #15 on: October 30, 2020, 11:43:13 AM »
Quote
This is note an SDR setup. I will check on this and see about adding an SDR there to have some control and separation.

Thanks for checking. Now I'm getting greedy, but an SDR feed at Kodiak would be nice too, split 3 ways with local/low/high separated.

I'll see what we can do. Kodiak is a little more "challenging" due to the setup there.

Offline JetScan1

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #16 on: October 30, 2020, 12:02:29 PM »
Quote
I'll see what we can do. Kodiak is a little more "challenging" due to the setup there.

Totally understand, it was more tongue and cheek, but while I'm at it the Anchorage airport feeds could really use an SDR setup too. I find those way overloaded. Not complaining, just an observation, good feeds to have as they are too. Now just need to find someone in the Juneau area for sector 07 and 08 and you will have most of ZAN covered.

Offline dave

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Re: new ZAN Anchorage Center (Bethel)
« Reply #17 on: October 30, 2020, 12:06:23 PM »
Totally understand, it was more tongue and cheek, but while I'm at it the Anchorage airport feeds could really use an SDR setup too. I find those way overloaded. Not complaining, just an observation, good feeds to have as they are too. Now just need to find someone in the Juneau area for sector 07 and 08 and you will have most of ZAN covered.

We don't control the PANC feeds at all but work closely with a very competent provider there. We can work toward some separation of channels there...some are sort of overloaded but not always. Certainly pre-COVID that was more true, but that is a universal truth.