Tracking Aircraft Using the RTL SDR Dongle

The RTL-SDR dongle allows you to do some fun things with radio signals. In this video we'll show you how to see the aircraft flying near you.
RTL-SDR ADSB Tutorial Page
www.rtl-sdr.com/adsb-aircraft...
RTL-SDR w/ antenna kit purchase link
amzn.to/2T2OCpt
Antenna Kit alone
amzn.to/2y2xMji
RTL SDR alone
amzn.to/3dNR4bv
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[@chrome7fan]

This dude is your grandpa who shows YOU, a young teenager, how to use a computer. This guy is so charming, please make more videos!!

[@ts4512]

I am new here and to the hobby. I have started doing multiple small projects and it has been very hard finding something that is understandable and easy to learn from. This video was amazing and I learned so much. Thankyou!

[@theswedishhamradionoob1810]

Holy shit man when i saw that you had 2640 subscribers i dropped my yaw i thought that you would at least have 1 milion subscribers because based on the quality of your videos you make you deserve it and dont forget as long as you provide your plant with sun water etc everyday it will grow.

[@reallifelima7951]

Great tutorial! In a matter of about 5 minutes I was up and running picking up aircraft up to 120 miles away

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Glad it helped!

[@thomashvnmusic]

"Apps are about the destination and hobbies are about the journey!" Well, placed!

[@gafriglebit]

Just got mine in the mail, yours is the first of the many videos I'll watch to get to speed. Earned a new subscriber today!

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Thank you for watching and commenting.

[@GP-mf6im]

Best video explaining RTL applications for ADS-B! Tks a lot! Regards from Brazil!

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Glad it was helpful!

[@richardw3123]

Great Video, easy to follow and concise. Inspired !

[@MatthewJohnCrittenden]

Just getting into SDR and doing some research waiting for my dongle, this is super helpful. I can tell my new hobby is going to be a very enjoyable rabbit hole. A long way from dabbling in CB radio in the 80s in the UK ...

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Good luck!

[@packetcreeper]

Just got this up and running and it's amazing!

[@bodazaphfa]

Great video! Thank you!

[@photorealm]

When you first pulled up the google map, my first thought was wow, that city looks a lot like my city, then I realized, IT IS MY CITY LOL. I live just south of Deer Valley airport and just got the USB receiver and am exploring all the cool things that can be done with it. This is one for sure. Great video,Thanks for sharing.

[@garystewart439]

Excellent demonstration, thanks!

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Glad it was helpful!

[@podifue]

Helpful video, thanks!

[@meagain419]

This video does not have enough likes. Other video's assume you already have a decoder running. Thank you sir for helping me out!

[@TurboNorm]

That is so cool. I’m going to give that a try.

[@caryhawes3041]

You Sound Like Andy Rooney from 60 Minutes......Great Video Thanks for the Knowledge

[@Ressy66]

Great video, I've been feeding flightradar24 and planefinder for about 7 years, first few years on linux file serer, then moved to rpi, since its ultra low power consumption, its on same UPS as router and those two last 2 hours on battery, my other UPS with server on it, lasts 15 minutes (hence the move of dump1090 to the rpi) One advantage to your own ADSB radar, in my country, certain flights are suppressed by the likes of fr24 and co, in particular police choppers and some ultra rich billionaires private learjets, of course if they are in your coverage area, you see them :)

[@philswede]

Greetings from Sweden 🇸🇪 You, Sir, just got yourself a new subscriber and a thumps up 🎉

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Awesome, thank you!

[@Yelnats101]

prefect video. easy to follow

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Glad you liked it.

[@adamthornton8049]

Brilliant tutorial ive struggled for months wish i had teachers like you wouldn,t be driving a truck now

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Glad I was helpful.

[@ggonmar]

I spent 2 weeks trying to get this set up, finally this video helped me achieve it! Thank you! Only question though - the planes I'm seeing have the Route part empty, even though they are all commercial regular lines - is it possible to feed the callsign onto any system that would pull that up? Thank you again!

[@radio645]

I got the program downloaded only to find out the radar map opened in the UK! Not sure how that happened but I'm starting over and re-watching your video to see what I missed.

[@agentsmith1573]

​@Gadget Talk Does this track Military aircraft as well? We have a lot of military c-130's and helicopters flying over every day, I was just wondering if they'll show up, too?

[@dellman191]

Thank you!

[@GadgetTalk4U]

You bet!

[@texhow1]

Can you please show details on forming an Antenna coverage Splat.

[@alexoja2918]

Can I feed this data to flightradar24? Using the software you used?

[@raa6504]

I get ads-s not from so far away, but my antena is a dipole made for receiving NOAA weather broadcasts, it works well for receiving acars from ~150 miles (131.7-8 mhz). I looked it up now and saw that ads-b signals are in the 900's 1500's Mhz. 'Hey Phineas, i how what we're doing today.'

[@stephenpowell653]

i just installed it on mine, and took about 5 minutes, easy

[@mr.e5988]

Thanks for the information. I've installed Virtual Radar and Dump1090 and it's working for my local area. I am having an issue using SDRSharp and Dump1090 at the same time on the same SDR dongle. Is this as expected or is their something I can do to get both programs to work at the same time. Thanks

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Good question. Not sure. I suspect it has to do with port assignments and associated drivers un your computer.. If I was playing detective, that's were I'd start.

[@caroledavies3893]

Hi Thank you for your reply, I have now tried it on another computer with Windows 10 and it works just fine, but not with my Windows 7 computer, looking closer at the fault reporting it lokks like its a permission issue, not quite sure how to solve that at the moment, but at least its running on one machine, best regards

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Thanks for the info!

[@alphalunamare]

The two arms of the Dipole are separated by a small distance where the feed comes in ... do you take that distance into account when determining the desired length to expand the telescopic arms? ... or do we just ignore that sepparation?

[@GadgetTalk4U]

With a dipole you were transmitting with, you'd tune it to a lowest VSWR you could get. With a receiving antenna, close is good enough. The antenna legs are what matters.

[@parilukwitz9343]

Anyone know how to get dump1090 running? Non of the stuff I found works.

[@anonymous-cr5jw]

Do we get passenger detail

[@novan231186]

How to record asterix data from sdr rtl?

[@drakeblackk]

Found DUMP1090, but the bat file is not running like shown in the video. It just says that it found 2 devices (and not the V4 is selected) press any key to continue. O_o

[@ronclarkson4438]

1"=25.4mm, the video mentions 25.2mm

[@nate1479]

I used my did everything as in the vedio but dump1090 cannot recognize my hackrf one dongle, please kindly help out....

[@caroledavies3893]

Hi Good morning, I am trying to set up Dump1090 with virtual radar server , but when I do the test connection after running batch file it says "connection could not be made with these settings because the target machine actively actively refused it 127.0.0.1. Is this a Dumo1090 issue or virtual radar / best regrads

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Check a couple of things. Does dump 1090 run and fill the window with aircraft information? It should. I must be running when you set up VRS. Next, be sure you've answered the questions in the receiver wizard correctly, SDR Radio, Dump1090 and on this computer as described in the video. If these are correct, I'm not sure why it wouldn't work. You could try one of the other decoders listed in the tutorial page on RTL SDR .com. You've had SDR Sharp running? If not, be sure that it works. I could be a driver problem and you need to run Zadig program again to ensure the right driver loaded. I've also found that the driver can be USB port specific. Have you changed where you plug in the RTL-SDR dongle?

[@Jays22b]

I was going to use mine on a flight , Just using the phone and tap of the IM's of cabin . would have been easy to do, but i didnt try . I had the gear to try.

[@mosesmunoz7721]

I'm also in Phoenix and want to know how high up should my antenna be up in the air to receive the best signal?

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Generally the higher the better, but there comes a point of diminishing returns. I get good local coverage from my desktop on the second floor. Pinnacle of your roof should be plenty high.

[@mosesmunoz7721]

@@GadgetTalk4U I went to Ham Radio Outlet since it's right down the street from me and got a scanner antenna. It covers the 25-1300 MHZ freq. You should test it out and put it in one of your videos. I just have it sitting on my desk and it works great. Might help others that watch this video and you can add where to buy it.

[@billdomb]

Aren't there websites that present this data without needing an sdr receiver?

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Yes. I use flightradar24 on my android smartphone.

[@timm2020]

Do you have to have Internet service to make this work?

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Not after downloading the various software tools. You can connect to shared services, but not required.

[@Colin_Jones]

there is a lot of dump1090 files out there...What is the URL for your dump1090 please?

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Sorry, I don't recall. I used one from the RTL-SDR.com website. There's a long article with lots of software descriptions and links

[@krisraps]

I Have 17 Meter High Antenna On My Roof, I Got 1 Plane ONLY, WHat is the problem? :(

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Try this link for SDR software including dump1090. It lists a link to github to download the software. It's a zip file a short distance down the list of files assuming you're using Windows. www.rtl-sdr.com/tag/dump1090/ Try this link for a couple of easy DIY antenna's. It's not how high so much as the right length. They are just a couple of inches long since the frequency is so high. discussions.flightaware.com/t/three-easy-diy-antennas-for-beginners/16348 I use the dipole antenna mount that came with my RTL-SDR with the short extensions fully retracted. A small mag mount of the proper length on an inverted pie plate should also work nicely.

[@mikem6xmn838]

I Use The Air nav Micro Radar Box. (yes It's A Dongle}

[@kevinfox2413]

Could someone help me find the latest version of dump1090? The only one I can find is several years old and does not display aircraft like seen at 7:25. Thanks!!!

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Try airspy.com/download/ or github.com/MalcolmRobb/dump1090

[@kevinfox2413]

@@GadgetTalk4U Thank you for the quick reply, I'm getting usb_open error -12. Error opening the RTLSDR device: No error. Google hasn't pointed me to a solution. Any suggestions? Thanks!

[@kevinfox2413]

@@GadgetTalk4U Just figured it out. For those with the same issue, paste "--device-index 1" in the top line of the dump1090.bat file. It works!!!

[@GadgetTalk4U]

@@kevinfox2413 Glad you found it and thanks for sharing!

[@h.sapienstechnologicus8865]

bat 1090 not working. No supported RTLSDR devices found. Why is that the techy devs that can hack a car fail to make a normal installer.

[@kevinfox2413]

Were you able to find V1.45? I'm having trouble locating the newest version of dump1090.

[@mikeh8416]

Every version of software I found is Windows XP or 8!! I guess I'll stick with the web version for now.

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Check the software list on the RTL-SDR website. I'm running the software on a Win10 machine. Make sure you use the URL with the hyphen between the L and the S. It lists dozens of not hundreds of apps.

[@johnjay7822]

In my list, I can see 30-40 planes. On the map, they are all stacked in 2 locations and don't move. What is going wrong here? Why is this working by default so easily for so many?

[@GadgetTalk4U]

Really don't know. Sorry. Is the map scale so small that everything at an airport is stacked on top of each other?

[@johnjay7822]

@@GadgetTalk4U No map is fine. Can pinch and zoom anywhere on map like a real map, but the icons are stacked on the polar top of the map and the equator directly below. I can click on the list, and the hightlighted plane pops to the top of the stack.

[@jimmueller6356]

IDEA: Install FlightRadar on your phone. Done.

[@GadgetTalk4U]

I have it and use it. This is about not only enjoying the tracking of airplanes, but also learning about and enjoying the process. Kinda like spending 6 hours tending your pork butt on a smoker vs. driving to your local BBQ joint. Some enjoy the journey as much or more than the destination. Not a bad idea - depending on your desired outcome.

[@zelmoziggy]

You lost me when you didn’t show how to strip the coaxial cable.