Monitoring En Route Air Traffic Control, Oceanic Clearances, and Company Frequencies

[@Andreharview]

thanks for the NATS site map, wondered why I can here Scottish when I live on the Isle of Man! keep the vids coming

[@FrugalRadio]

The IOM is a great spot for monitoring civil and military aviation. Depending where you are on the island, you may also be able to pick up the RAF Valley approach / radar controllers as well. For sure you'll get the training flights etc as well. They are on the military air band - the subject of a future video!

[@davidedger3935]

Excellent video. Love monitoring air freqs and starting to monitor data with your help. 73

[@FrugalRadio]

Great to hear. Thanks for letting me know, and enjoy all you discover!

[@darrangilpin]

Love this. Being based in Bangor Co Down this video was right up my street as I get the Rathlin/Scottish/London hand overs on my scanner along with Oceanic clearance.

[@FrugalRadio]

Nice! I've been known to drive around those areas. Had my first flying lessons out of Ards back in the 90s. Enjoy your monitoring 😀

[@n1vca]

Excellent compilation of information, very well visualized - thanks so much, that is a great contribution. In Germany the company frequencies are all only in the upper 131MHz segment and make sure your scanner has the ACARS channels locked out (primary 131.725,secondary 131.525 as well as 131.850 and 131.550). It seems like the majority of company requests are not being sent by voice anymore, they are sent via text messages within the just mentioned ACARS data as well as the more state of the art VDL2, which is a high speed version of ACARS that you can find on the the upper half of the 136 MHz range. These are little bursts of noise (19200BPS) that you can hear with a scanner and see very clearly with an SDR. Decoding ACARS and VDL2 can be done easily with free software and an RTL dongle, but I am sure this will be covered in detail in one of the next videos.

[@FrugalRadio]

Great to hear of your experiences, and thanks for mentioning about locking out the data channels. Yes, ACARS & VDL2 will get covered in a future episode!

[@eckwullie579]

Great videos with a lot of interesting info and glad you cover the UK too. Just waiting on a new Uniden UBC 125-XLT arriving next week, having decided to get back in to it. Wish I had never sold my Yupiteru MVT-7100 when I stopped using it a good few years ago.

[@FrugalRadio]

Ah the Yupiters were fantastic radios. I see them pop up every once in a while on the NUKS Facebook group and on eBay. Maybe worth keeping an eye out!

[@EverydayJ1786]

Boy I wish I lived closer to the Airport !. I'm loving every episode in this series . Was never too interested in the Airband until now 👍

[@FrugalRadio]

Glad you're enjoying it Jordan. Things will only be getting better! Airband has a lot of treasures!!!

[@paulnortham]

Fantastic! This is great introductory video - I'll be passing this round. Thanks for thinking of us over here in the UK. That's really useful stuff. Always high quality content and pitched just right. About to watch it again!

[@FrugalRadio]

Awesome, thanks for sharing. That's really helpful Paul. I'm pleased to hear you're continuing to enjoy the content!

[@eddieshanahan4495]

Thankyou for the uk map very helpfull loving these videos

[@FrugalRadio]

Ah, glad to hear someone is going to use it. I could never find a UK map like that online when I lived in Britain, so I'm happy to have been able to put one together. Enjoy!

[@nickh4308]

Thanks for the great content looking forward to the upcoming videos, I found the UK info really useful

[@FrugalRadio]

Good to hear. The upcoming video also has some UK specific info.

[@JoloNavarro]

This is really cool! ❤️ will try to listen to these frequencies on my area

[@FrugalRadio]

Hopefully you'll find some active ones nearby!

[@Wayne-Pr]

Another Great Video looking forward to the upcoming videos especially on H.F. & Sat comms. I might have to start to make time & start pinning some frequencies for Aust on a Google Map. Rgs Wayne.

[@FrugalRadio]

Let me know if you do a map of Australian TX sites and I'll add it to the description & blog.

[@Wayne-Pr]

@@FrugalRadio It would be a MASSIVE job but with a professional background of over 30 years in both aviation as a commercial pilot & communications as a senior communications network engineer along with up to the minute aviation frequencies for the whole of Aust including maps & oceanic routes from the ERSA or En-route supplement Australia Ive just jad a look at the current one & its 1,100 pages but I'm happy to give it a red hot crack. 😁 Think I'd start with the major capital city commercial airports in Aust, then branch into the secondary small regional ( but still commercial airports) including routes between then all with all the frequencies including both H.F. & VHF branching into the much smaller G.A. ( some of which still handle a lot of everyday private jet & emergency traffic including the Australian Royal Flying Doctor Service or the RFDS as well as Helimed & Aeromed ) during our summer bush fire season these Airports can become very busy exteremly fast if they become a base for water & retardant refilling & bombing & quickly moving fire fighting staff around, quiet often they will truck in huge tankers of Jet A1, water & retardant to keep these aircraft flying around the clock. Its not unusual for these areas to quickly become a restricted area & for them to get their own area controller if they are operating out of a VFR airport so everyone knows whos doing what and whos going where as well as controlling the airborne media. The aviation city that can spring up over night at a sleepy hollow G.A. airport as a result of a large uncintrolled bush fire is incredible.

[@FrugalRadio]

That's really interesting Wayne, about the turnaround at GA airfields during bush fires. Generally the airport frequencies are easy to find in North America, but it is nice to have access to a comprehensive en route sector list, with TX site locations so people can know when they'll receive both sides of the conversation. Is HF used much over the landmass there, or more for the Pacific and Indian oceans?

[@Wayne-Pr]

Howdy@@FrugalRadio. So From a commercial point of view there are many designated "aviation remote" areas around Aust where H.F. frequencies are shown on various charts as recomended & monitored but they are very rarley used between VHF Range at height, satellite & data rarley do commercial services need to resort to H.F. unless maybe its an older aircraft that disnt have all the comms bells & whistles, on tje other hand the RFDS (Royal Flying Doctor Service ) is a big user of H.F. in Aust as that is their main form of communications back to base when operating at either ground level or very low levels as they are out of VHF range whilst they do carry Inmarsat Sat phones a lot of the time H.F. is just a lot quicker. RFDS Central Operations Port Augusta VNZ 2,020 , 4,010 , 6,890, 8,165 (Port Augusta is the communication centre for emergency contact RFDS Central Operations covering S.A & lower half of N.T.) RFDS South Eastern Section Broken Hill VJC 2,020, 4,055, 6,920 RFDS Queensland Section Cairns VJN 2020, 2260, 5145, 5110, 6965, 7465 Charleville VJJ 2020, 4980, 6845, 6965, 7465 Mount Isa VJI 2020, 5110, 6965 Aa far as H.F. over the Indian & Pacific go yes it is still used & ATC still maintain a listening watch & conduct regular SELCAL checks with aircraft but as satellite technology has got cheaper, better & more reliable as per an earlier post a lot of the H.F Comms have moved off of H.F. as a primary & onto Satellite & of course with the world wide slow down of international aviation together with airlines collapsing the H.F. bands have become even quiter. Our 3 x main oceanic H.F. Frequencies here in Aust are Night primary 8.867, secondary 5.643 Day Primary 13.261, secondary 8.867 All Australian H.F. Traffic for the whole of Aust is run out of Brisbane Centre. Auckland also operate on 8.867 & will quiet often answer traffic calling Bris if Bris do not respond after 2 or 3 calls. Auckland will relay information back to Bris via a dedicated sat link if comms is not able to be established between the aircraft & Bris ( which does happen occasationally then Bris will give Auckland information to hand back to the aircraft in question. Aviation & Aviation comms are 2 passions of mine & I'm so lucky that professionally & as a hobby I get to put the 2 of them together. Over the Australian Easter break Im going to get started on that aviation comms list & some location maps for you. Rgs Wayne.

[@FrugalRadio]

Brilliant info Wayne, and I hope that any other viewers interested in monitoring Australian aviation signals are paying attention! I remember as a teen growing up in Ireland I always wanted to receive RFDS, but never did. I believe I heard Perth on HF for a few minutes once though. I wonder if it used to be an active HF station for the Indian Ocean, or Western Australian flights?

[@jonwornham8674]

Another great video! I've dropped a link to it on the UK Aiband Monitor FB group. (Like the discrete credit :-) )

[@FrugalRadio]

Thanks Jon. Appreciate you sharing it as well!

[@larkop6504]

Perfect, Love everything aviation so this subject coverage is really interesting, pretty useful being close to Heathrow too. Not sure if you have covered it yet, would love to see some of your Antenna Builds covering different frequency ranges, possibly build steps for a few simpler antenna's. First day using SDR and loved it.

[@FrugalRadio]

Congrats on your first SDR day. Being near Heathrow you'll have tons of signals to listen in on! I haven't done any videos on making simple antennas yet, but will add it to my list of videos to make. A lot of people would benefit from it I think. Thanks for the suggestion.

[@larkop6504]

@@FrugalRadio What your already doing is well thought out and methodical, regretting not picking this up sooner as i would have taken more of the theory on board from working with Radar systems and Transponders. Yes i agree, i think it would encourage more amateurs to experiment with their own designs or already proven Designs. Looking forward to your other videos

[@ME10920]

Great video. I'm interested in getting into this I'm just bit confused by all the antennas .. would a 1090mhz one be the correct one for the monitoring in this video?

[@FrugalRadio]

Hi. You would want a dedicated air band antenna to monitor the ATC & planes. The 1090 ones are for picking up the data transmissions for radar positioning.

[@joseriggio4366]

Exelent episode; one curiosity about the frcuency is the mode, in other words , is AM, FM, Side band trunk? or what type or mode, thanks

[@FrugalRadio]

VHF aviation frequencies are all AM. USB is used for all aviation HF frequencies, and also for satellite modes.

[@jemussi7842]

Great Video! I'm seeing what looks like FHSS data bursts around 137MHz here in Watford UK. Any idea what this could bE? Thanks, M7JZW

[@FrugalRadio]

On my last trip to the UK I saw lots of data bursts. Mostly UHF though. Turned out to be water meters! Not sure about those in the 137 MHz area though.

[@philiprobinson999]

Great Dunn Fell Location 54 41.03, -002 27.04 VHF Freqs 126.600 - VOMET Should the above read Volmet?

[@FrugalRadio]

Lol, indeed it should! Although if you listen to it ad nauseum... Thanks for pointing that out @Philip Robinson.

[@philiprobinson999]

@@FrugalRadio Thanks for posting the video, it's a great help to me here in the UK.

[@StorminNorvin]

5:22 It appears that site has been deleted, and someone else claimed the domain maybe.

[@FrugalRadio]

That's unfortunate. It was a good resource.

[@dougtaylor7724]

You say Montana funny. Ain’t from around there are ya?

[@FrugalRadio]

Lol, all I know about Montana I'm learning from Yellowstone!