Phuket aircraft and ship data - system upgrade

[simon43]

Non-techie:

For those of you who like to follow the aircraft and marine traffic on flightradar24.com and marinetraffic.com websites, I have upgraded my receiving system to improve the coverage area for both websites.

Techie:

Flightradar24.com - My omnidirectional receiving antenna has been raised to a height of 20 metres, increasing reception range out to 300km from my location by Phuket Airport.

The receiver ID is F-VTSP3. Received coverage is not omnidirectional, due to signal blocking by the control tower hill and other hills to the east of me. Reception is best out west over the Andaman Sea.

(There wasn't much aircraft traffic when I did the screen grab - my coverage includes aircraft on the ground at the airport, and then a sector basically from north round to south via the west).

marinetraffic.com - I have installed a pair of 3-element yagi antennas at 18 metres height on my mast, oriented north and south, and then coupled via a combiner to my receiver.

My receiver ID is 2046.

Coverage is out to 425km from my receiver, both north up the Andaman coast/Myanmar and south down towards Banda Aceh.

I will make some further system enhancements over the coming months.

[tolsti]

Thanks Simon.. Pity I've moved to Pattaya or I'd like to have a look at the setup.

[LivinginKata]

Thanks Simon, I use those sites on a daily basis.

[steelepulse]

Very nice. I use panphuket.com to look at both of these.

[simon43]

Just an update to this.

For the aircraft data, the theoretical maximum reception distance is about 470km, because the UHF signal is generally line-of-sight, with some minimal 'ducting'. Also, I still have the tops of the old rubber trees at my location masking the line-of-sight. (I might pay a Burmese to chop the trees down after dark...)

For the marine data, I realised that some of the sea areas that my receiver covered, already had adequate coverage from other receivers. So yesterday, I relaligned my directional antenna to point just north of due west, out over the north Andaman Sea and up towards Myanmar and Bangladesh and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands.

Although I am using only one of my stacked Yagis, the resulting data:

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/stations/2046

indicates that I'm receiving ship data from over 1,000Km away.

So, next time I scramble up my antenna mast, I will link in the other directional antenna to add further coverage in the Myanmar waters.