Aussie Feeders

[bhaal]

They fully fly with transponders, but have requested public websites like FR24 not report them.

If you have your own setup, you would see them.

Skytraders does many movements not reported on FR24.

The 340 White Airbus is often used to different stuff too.

Ahhh I've only seen 1 Skytraders plane, an A319 VH-VCJ, and that was only just on the 22nd April this year, callsign was SND2.. Come up from south of the border and left again about 2hrs after landing, flying back from whence it came...

[Asuka]

Ahhh I've only seen 1 Skytraders plane, an A319 VH-VCJ, and that was only just on the 22nd April this year, callsign was SND2.. Come up from south of the border and left again about 2hrs after landing, flying back from whence it came...

There is also A319 VH-VHD that does Antarctica trips.

A Skytraders Airbus A319 has been used on behalf of the Australian government to ferry asylum seekers to the remote pacific island state of Nauru.
According to the publication Crikey, Skytraders made a request to the global flight tracking organisation, FlightAware, that its asylum-seeker transportation flights not be tracked.

[Oblivian]

Ahhh I've only seen 1 Skytraders plane, an A319 VH-VCJ, and that was only just on the 22nd April this year, callsign was SND2.. Come up from south of the border and left again about 2hrs after landing, flying back from whence it came...

You have premium eh? Look at vhd history. You can easily see it's selective and not blanketed. Some of the blanks have been filled out by mlat.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

[bhaal]

Hmmm, did one of the TEST1234 beacons at BNE go offline for a little while? I can see 7CF7BA and 7CF7B8 constantly and 7CF7B9 occasionally pops up... But 7CF7BA seems to have dropped out at some point about an hour ago around 18:50, 29th Apr...? Or did I lose signal strength maybe because of rain? Oh, does anyone know how high off the ground the beacons are, and where they are in relation to the runway?

[Kemistry]

Hmmm, did one of the TEST1234 beacons at BNE go offline for a little while? I can see 7CF7BA and 7CF7B8 constantly and 7CF7B9 occasionally pops up... But 7CF7BA seems to have dropped out at some point about an hour ago around 18:50, 29th Apr...? Or did I lose signal strength maybe because of rain? Oh, does anyone know how high off the ground the beacons are, and where they are in relation to the runway?

No bhaal, my logs show all four TEST1234s were up with one second contacts across that time. I get them all quite strong and do worry that their data badly impacts my "average range" statistics. Not sure that they are filtered off in FR24. Looks like FA do filter them in their stats. I do not know where they are located but the signal strengths are different (2 stronger than the other two). Maybe they are not even at YBBN field?

[bhaal]

No bhaal, my logs show all four TEST1234s were up with one second contacts across that time. I get them all quite strong and do worry that their data badly impacts my "average range" statistics. Not sure that they are filtered off in FR24. Looks like FA do filter them in their stats. I do not know where they are located but the signal strengths are different (2 stronger than the other two). Maybe they are not even at YBBN field?

Hrm.. It shouldn't affect your average range, I've never actually got a position for them, which means they cannot be used in averaging stats.. Guess I just lost some range at some point, not that it's happened before... I am guessing that 2 of them are closer to the terminals which would reduce the signal for you, I only get the occasional GND message which is normally on the taxiway right at the start of RWY01 right in the middle between the runway and the Int. terminal. So these mode-s transmitters have to be off the ground by about 20-50ft... So if any of you are spotters look for antenna towers that form a quadrant spaced widely apart around the runway...?

[fungus]

Hrm.. It shouldn't affect your average range, I've never actually got a position for them, which means they cannot be used in averaging stats.. Guess I just lost some range at some point, not that it's happened before... I am guessing that 2 of them are closer to the terminals which would reduce the signal for you, I only get the occasional GND message which is normally on the taxiway right at the start of RWY01 right in the middle between the runway and the Int. terminal. So these mode-s transmitters have to be off the ground by about 20-50ft... So if any of you are spotters look for antenna towers that form a quadrant spaced widely apart around the runway...?

Fellow aussies;

The information I'm posting here isn't directly relevant to your query up there regarding those Mode-S sites but I hope is of some help to you in tracking them down. Here in Sydney there are 4 of them, 7C7FCA, CB, CC and CD of which I pick up two of them permanently and one intermittently on my SBS-1 unit. As I've posted elsewhere on the forum where these sites are located I wont repeat it all here but suffice it to say one is on Mt Razorback southwest of the city (elevation approx. 1,600ft) between Picton and Menangle, one is at Kurrajong Heights to the northwest of the city (elevation approx. 1,000 ft) and two are on Centrepoint Tower in the city (elevation approx. 1,000ft). (note these elevations may not be 100% accurate as I'm going on memory). Interestingly on my unit they are all displayed at elevation 0ft.

The two at Centrepoint Tower used to be picked up by the 'F' feeders and displayed on the FR24 map but would be sprayed all over the city, M-LAT being what it is at those elevations. That was recently fixed by the FR24 team and they are now hidden which is good because they were very disconcerting when Rwy 16L & R were in operation and they kept getting in the way of landing aircraft display.

As I said, I hope this information might help you guys to figure out where those sites are up there in and around Brissy. I thought the elevations alone may give you a clue. Those here are under a callsign ('SSM' - SSM1, SSM2, SSM3, SSM4) which is operated by 'Sydney Site Monitoring' but I haven't been able to find any equivalent up there.

Good luck and regards,
Gregg

[bhaal]

Fellow aussies;

The information I'm posting here isn't directly relevant to your querie up there regarding those Mode-S sites but I hope is of some help to you in tracking them down. Here in Sydney there are 4 of them, 7C7FCA, CB, CC and CD of which I pick up two of them permanently and one intermittently on my SBS-1 unit. As I've posted elsewhere on the forum where these sites are located I wont repeat it all here but suffice it to say one is on Mt Razorback southwest of the city (elevation approx. 1,600ft) between Picton and Menangle, one is at Kurrajong Heights to the northwest of the city (elevation approx. 1,000 ft) and two are on Centrepoint Tower in the city (elevation approx. 1,000ft). (note these elevations may not be 100% accurate as I'm going on memory). Interestingly on my unit they are all displayed at elevation 0ft.

The two at Centrepoint Tower used to be picked up by the 'F' feeders and displayed on the FR24 map but would be sprayed all over the city, M-LAT being what it is at those elevations. That was recently fixed by the FR24 team and they are now hidden which is good because they were very disconcerting when Rwy 16L & R were in operation and they kept getting in the way of landing aircraft display.

As I said, I hope this information might help you guys to figure out where those sites are up there in and around Brissy. I thought the elevations alone may give you a clue. Those here are under a callsign ('SSM' - SSM1, SSM2, SSM3, SSM4) which is operated by 'Sydney Site Monitoring' but I haven't been able to find any equivalent up there.

Good luck and regards,
Gregg

Ahhhh ok, as they aren't on the AP grounds that changes things.... I can think of a few places they might be... Oceanview, Mt. Gravatt, Mt. Cootha and any of the tall buildings in the city...

[Ressy]

Ahhhh ok, as they aren't on the AP grounds that changes things.... I can think of a few places they might be... Oceanview, Mt. Gravatt, Mt. Cootha and any of the tall buildings in the city...

Not at Ocean View (Actually Mt Mee), I can guarantee you that

I dont have access to the Mt Glorious site, or Qld Comms site at Coot-tha, so it's possible may be one on those sites.
Maybe North Straddy too

Edited:

I suppose someone with some spare time could build a yagi, spin around to get directions

[bhaal]

Hey Kemistry,

What's your messges per aircraft per second at?

[Kemistry]

What's your messges per aircraft per second at?

Now that’s a hard question to answer, bhaal. I think there may have been some discussion on this topic somewhere in this forum – but I forget the details. I believe there are many different types of transponders on different (and the same) aircraft that transmit very different numbers of all the different types of DF messages. Maybe all those differences across just a selected time period make it difficult to give a representative average over all time. My setup seems to be fairly discriminatory between aircraft (maybe my RF filter helps) so, just now, I’m getting about 200-350 messages per second with about 60 active aircraft (and TEST1234s). For a given modern aircraft I regularly log more than 12 records with a different timestamp within a particular second. But probably average about 8 records per second over the longer period of time that I track that particular flight. And remember that this so much depends on the aircraft avionics.
Oops - I forgot to mention that about 5-6 ground vehicles are often (but not always?) included in my message counts. They all have their location data so I believe that they negatively impact my average-range statistics as do all aircraft on the ground at YBBN. I have lots of close range data that pulls my average range down even though I have 360 deg out to 120 miles at less than 200 feet. Go figure that average-range means anything in FR24 stats.

[bhaal]

Must be some good conditions tonight, suddenly I am seeing a number of planes on the ground at BNE .. How odd...

[bhaal]

More people need to fly in/into/out of Australia on Saturdays... Cannot believe the huge drop in flights on Saturday....

[fungus]

More people need to fly in/into/out of Australia on Saturdays... Cannot believe the huge drop in flights on Saturday....

Yes,

2 and a half hours to curfew here in SYD and I've not seen it this quiet on the map in a very long time. Only 8 aircraft on my uploader at the moment...

In fact, most of oz seems to be very quiet tonight.

Regards,
Gregg

[airnrail]

More people need to fly in/into/out of Australia on Saturdays... Cannot believe the huge drop in flights on Saturday....

I've been watching FR24 since the height of the resources boom and even then Saturdays, particularly at night, were always the quietest day of the week. I guess a lot of people get where they want to go on Friday and go to where they have to be on Sunday or Monday. Aside from the Sydney curfew, nights have never been busy anywhere in Australia except Perth after about 10.00pm - I'm not sure how Melbourne and Brisbane airports can afford to run 24/7 operations but maybe there are a lot of smaller non-ADS-B aircraft like couriers using them late at night. Overall there is a marked downturn in the number of flights throughout Australia, any day, any time, since economic downturn has set in coupled with Qantas and Virgin ending their capacity war.