First night of using RB, without my antenna

[bailey_uk]

Things are going well!

Placed my antenna baseplate on an open velux window in my bedroom and started receiving aircraft straight away.

I have just done a screenshot after about an hour of receiving.

One thing I have noticed is that I seemed to loose signal as the aircraft flew DIRECTLY above, but regained as it travelled a mile further.

James

[RodBearden]

Not bad for not having an aerial - tried a coathanger yet?

Rod

[bailey_uk]

Yeh I thought about a coathanger but how wud I fix it to the stand that I have? Its like a tiny thread, not something I can poke into?

[RodBearden]

If the base is by a window, use sticky tape to hold it to the base, and more sticky tape to stick the top of the aerial to the window!

Must admit I've never tried this myself :-)

EDIT - if you try this, do remember to use a wire coathanger, won't you ;-)

Rod

[bailey_uk]

hehe so one like this wont do?

[Allocator]

Ha!

That made me laugh out loud - excellent - start waving that out of the window and the men in white coats will come for you!!!!!

If you stand the base in the corner of the window, you should be able to balance a straight piece of wire coat hanger on top of the threaded bit and rest the top in the corner of the window.  As long as it's touching metal to metal, it should work.

If it works well, you could go into mass production and make a fortune :-)

There's some good information here:

http://www.designboom.com/history/wirehangers.html

[RodBearden]

Yes - that's a point - wire coathangers even have the spiral bit where the two ends are twisted together - you could go into production turning AirNav aerials into hangars - that's if you ever get any AirNav aerials - oh, sorry :-(

Rod

[bailey_uk]

Another thing thats slightly confused me at first is that when an aircraft is showing both Airfields i.e Origin and Destination, I thought they'd be displayed the other way round? Is that how they are shown on a real ATC screen? (not that I can remember what is the correct way of showing it)

[Allocator]

They are displayed on Radarbox as From - To

EGLL-EGGP

London Heathrow to Liverpool

I'm not sure what is displayed at the ATC centres now, but we used to just have the last 2 letters for the destination like LL for Heathrow.  All the other details were available from the flight plan computer.  If an aircraft was leaving UK airspace, then there was a single letter to show the exit point.

When you are using a real radar, you want to keep the label clutter down so you can see the aircraft!

[bailey_uk]

Yeh I understand now.

You know that the callsign Gamma 461 is? Or something sounding very similar? on 135.525 now and making some strange requests...

Cant seeem to find it on RB though

[Allocator]

See here for details of Gama Aviation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gama_Aviation

and here for the actual aircraft

http://www.airframes.org/fleet/gma

The chances are that it will be in your aircraft list somewhere, but not displaying a Flight ID (callsign) and not transmitting position information.

[bailey_uk]

Thanks for that.

Another question, what are the red dashed lines that appear to and from some aircraft?

[Allocator]

This will be showing the approximate route of the aircraft if there is a route showing.  If the route says EGLL-EGPP and the aircraft is over Birmingham, when you put the mouse pointer over the aircraft, you will get a dotted to Liverpool and Heathrow.

You can switch this off by using File > Preferences > Show Lines from Origin/To desination

Note also that you can pick a different colour scheme or even export your own for later use.

[RodBearden]

Have you tried the coathanger trick yet, Bailey?

Rod

[bailey_uk]

No, havent tried it, because I have searched my house high and low, and still cannot find a metal coat hanger! All either plastic or wood!