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  Introduction Given the recent US/China Balloon Incident  it seems an opportune moment to discuss tracking aircraft with an SDR (Software Defined Radio) using the ADSB technology deployed in almost all commercial, private and military aircraft. Last night the US shot down the balloon which had crossed the continental US - in reality, a bizarre event - I do not know of another occasion in living memory that the US has had to use missiles to shoot down an object over it's own territory. Even during WW2 when Japan launched balloons against the US mainland, these were never shot down. Whatever the ramifications of this remain to be seen but it was interesting to note many media outlets making use of ADSB tracking data through the Flight Radar 24 website . What many people may not realise is that to track these aircraft with your own equipment is actually a trivial matter and takes no time at all to set-up. This post covers the basic setup and configuration of an SDR receiver to acqui

Introduction A few people have asked me about the amateur radio thing, "why" being the most frequent.  I will touch on this in more detail as time goes on but in short, when I was a kid, I'd wonder, when looking at a normal FM radio, why does it start at 88? Why does it end at 108? What is before and after these numbers. Do you ever remember tuning into a radio when you were younger, hearing some random noises or foreign voices and wonder what it was you were picking up? Remember often hearing stuff from Eastern Europe during the cold war - who were those people hidden behind the Iron Curtain and what were they saying? How was I picking them up and from where? I later found out that this is a great range for widely broadcast services due to the size of antenna needed to receive these signals clearly - and for a whole host of other reasons. So, the short answer as to why -  No, I'm not especially interested in chatting to sweaty truckers racing up the A1 with a deliver