Updated: Aug 8

Recently I started exploring more about SDR (Software Defined Radio) through my antenna and found out about flight tracking patterns. Each flight sends out a specific signal that is transmitted by a certain frequency (same for all flights). That is then picked up by my antenna. My antenna isn’t strong enough to capture all flight data around 300 miles around my house but it’s good enough to capture up to 10-15 flights in the surrounding areas. The ones I’ve logged so far range from areas near Kent and Seattle, even Bainbridge Island!

So, the way I was able to actually access the data from the antenna was plugging in the main device into my computer and using the dump1090 open-source to decode the ADS-B data. Dump1090 is a common tool used to decode sdr signals at 1090 MHz frequency and provides information such as longitude, latitude, altitude, hex number (unique identification) and speed. I was able to extract the information by going into that specific directory and creating and installing all the tools. After running the command, I was able to then get a table of all the flights flying overhead me at the time with their information!! It was so cool to see the different flights and to actually transform the invisible signals around me into actual, live data.

Installing the right dump1090 library was a bit of a hassle, because there were a couple versions, but through trial and error I was finally able to find the original one. The dump1090 data didn’t directly provide the JSON data, but it gave me the data in a file, which I stored in the data folder and eventually was able to store it in a database, coming up next!