UAT or 978 MHZ Receiver

[TNHunter]

I have searched here for information on UAT (978 Mhz) receivers and found none.

Here in the United States, Most civil aircraft will have this by the year 2020 if they plan on flying in Class A, B, C and some E airspace. Air Carriers, freight haulers, and other aircraft that will fly above FL230 will stay with 1090ES Transponders. Note, they are considered ES (extended squidder) if they broadcast ADS-B data packets.

Are there any plans for a 978 MHZ receiver that will be cost effective and have PC interfaces like the 1090ES receivers? It would be interesting to have since RADAR from ATC will be rebroadcast on UAT. If there was such a receiver and it was close enough to ATC facilities it could receive this data and not require MLAT as positional and other info would be broadcast.

Thanks..

[Mike]

FR24 is today not handling UAT data. I know that the "Puck" was planned to by released in UAT version, but I'm not sure if it was really done.

http://www.kinetic-avionics.com/pucks.php

[Speed Daemon]

I'm in the same boat as you are, TNHunter. I live in the flight path of a fairly busy GA airport, but it's completely invisible at 1090MHz. I searched for UAT receivers, and all I could find was this and this. That's mighty slim pickings, and no bargains to be found.

There's no reason why a cheap SDR dongle couldn't do UAT with the right software. But I don't see anyone writing it.

[TNHunter]

I'm in the same boat as you are, TNHunter. I live in the flight path of a fairly busy GA airport, but it's completely invisible at 1090MHz. I searched for UAT receivers, and all I could find was this and this. That's mighty slim pickings, and no bargains to be found.

There's no reason why a cheap SDR dongle couldn't do UAT with the right software. But I don't see anyone writing it.

I totally agree. I am in the business from the ATC side and see benefits of having UAT over 1090.

Some here:
1 - ADS-R, ABS Rebroadcast of tracking information from Terminal RADAR including 1090 beacon only (ATCRABS, Mode S but NOT Mode ES which transmits ADS-B 1090 data packets). 1090 Mode ES does not require rebroadcast.
2 - NexRAD Weather RADAR broadcast.
3 - Notam and other text based flight information.

Also, as a side note, the correct terminology in the Unites States is 1090 Mode ES for ADS-B. Also, the beacon code, as shown in the software is the squawk code. The ADS-B 'ModeS' on the software should be labeled "ICAO Address" which shows the 24 bit ICAO address in Hex format.

Thx..

[SoCalBrian]

See this post, FR24 did some testing with UAT in 2013.

http://forum.flightradar24.com/threads/6166-Plane-has-ADS-B-but-never-saw-it-as-yellow?p=37395&viewfull=1#post37395

We are aware of that there is UAT in USA but we have only seen one UAT receiver on the market. We have one test unit up in USA that we are doing some test with, but we have not decided how to do in the future. The UAT receiver we bought is quite expensive and we would prefer to have one unit instead of installing one 1090 and one 978 unit. But if we add UAT to our FR24 box it will increase the price of all our boxes and we would probably need 2 antennas. Another problem is that UAT is used by smaller aircraft flying on quite low altitude which would force us the install the receivers really close to each other to get coverage on low altitudes.

So we are working on UAT but on a low gear.

[TNHunter]

Thanks Brian.

[peterhr]

Theres some info here on decoding UAT project
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http://www.vansairforce.com/community/archive/index.php?t-98171.html

LifeofReiley
02-07-2014, 08:32 AM
I've posted the source code for a 978MHz UAT FSK software receiver and FIS-B data/weather decoder here:

https://code.google.com/p/lone-star-ads-b/ (https://code.google.com/p/lone-star-...t%2Fuat-decode)
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(though it would be really nice to have a decode978 program to run on the Pi)

[TNHunter]

Sweet! Thanks.. I will check it out.