Hi all. Thanks for the interest. I'm going to post an impromptu blog post here just explaining what this is. The rather unfortunate ground stop today made this unexpectedly useful with the pilots here on Orcas just to get a sense of the chatter in our airspace re the situation.
This is an ETTUS B210 attached to a dual 4090 box. It's a polyphase channelizer that takes the entire airband, channelizes it using cuda code on GPU, demodulates it, detects transmissions, throws away data tx and then feeds the tx through a voice model I created for transcription. A separate LLM reads the transcriptions to create a situational awareness picture of the airspace.
I'm interested in open sourcing this and making it available for folks who can run an ETTUS B210 or high quality SDR with enoguh bandwidth and a local GPU machine, so that we can cover more airpsace.
This was born out of an incident we had not too long ago where a pilot around KORS (based at Friday Harbor) lost the engine in his 172, and put it in the water in front of a ferry and was picked up by the ferry. We're a pretty close bunch on Orcas Island and we only heard about it days later via social media. That felt completely unacceptable, and I set out to create a radio that could monitor everything in real-time, all the time, and alert on emergencies. That has extended to transcribing and creating situational awareness for a chunk of airspace.
I'm an IFR pilot. I fly a T206H regularly in IMC around here and I'm a ground instructor. You can email me at mark@defiant.com or find me on x at mmaunder if you'd like to connect. I'm particularly interested in hearing from folks who can run a station on their own hardware and are under bravo or a charlie or even just somewhere interesting re airspace.
Ah this is such a hot debate in the community. Yes it's straight up AM simplex and the argument for is: With AM when you step on another tx it screeches. Also pilots can hear pilots to improve situational awareness vs duplex which would have pilots only hearing ATC. Huge legacy fleet of aircraft. Cost to upgrade anything in a certified aircraft. There are so many arguments for digital though. it's a tough one.
I’m supposed to be flying tomorrow afternoon for my wedding next week. I fly to Toronto and then Mexico, so no stops in the US but needless to say I’m worried.
Not trying to promote myself, but there's another project I created to provide pilots with IFR situational awareness so we know if there's going to be a ground delay when we call for clearance. It's a bit technical, but you can use it to check your own route. It's at https://ifrmeter.com/
Yeah sorry about that. This is a software defined radio based on a hangar at Orcas island, receiving the entire airband, channelizing it into over 700 channels, and then demodulating the channels and playing whatever is sent provided it's voice. It also transcribes using a voice model and an LLM parses the output and attempts to create cards on the right hand side. It's also trying to detect simulcasts and remove the duplicate transmissions. Hope that helps explain it. It's also archiving everything so you can listen to old transmissions. Right now I'm working to keep the server up. Thanks HN. :-) For context, I'm a pilot based at KORS and a nerd.
I don't think GP is confused about the technical details, they are confused about what they are looking at and what the point is. I think the answer they were looking for is (correct me if I'm wrong) "this is a live feed of transcribed ATC comms in the Vancouver area," and possibly some evidence that there is a ground stop since things seems to be running as normal based on the most recent logs.
Haven't listened by KORS is a small untowered airport in the San Juan islands, in the northwest corner of WA state. It's very near Victoria, Canada, whose ATC controls the nearby airspace, extending into US territory slightly.
The post title is implying that Victoria airport is also subject to a ground stop.
This is an ETTUS B210 attached to a dual 4090 box. It's a polyphase channelizer that takes the entire airband, channelizes it using cuda code on GPU, demodulates it, detects transmissions, throws away data tx and then feeds the tx through a voice model I created for transcription. A separate LLM reads the transcriptions to create a situational awareness picture of the airspace.
I'm interested in open sourcing this and making it available for folks who can run an ETTUS B210 or high quality SDR with enoguh bandwidth and a local GPU machine, so that we can cover more airpsace.
This was born out of an incident we had not too long ago where a pilot around KORS (based at Friday Harbor) lost the engine in his 172, and put it in the water in front of a ferry and was picked up by the ferry. We're a pretty close bunch on Orcas Island and we only heard about it days later via social media. That felt completely unacceptable, and I set out to create a radio that could monitor everything in real-time, all the time, and alert on emergencies. That has extended to transcribing and creating situational awareness for a chunk of airspace.
I'm an IFR pilot. I fly a T206H regularly in IMC around here and I'm a ground instructor. You can email me at mark@defiant.com or find me on x at mmaunder if you'd like to connect. I'm particularly interested in hearing from folks who can run a station on their own hardware and are under bravo or a charlie or even just somewhere interesting re airspace.
I can barely understand 50% of what is being said and am impressed by these professionals who can.
Are the transmissions still analog for security / interoperability reasons?
14:03:04 Uh just wanted to confirm uh there's a ground stop uh going into Vancouver on this frequency?
14:03:10 Encore 3325, that's correct. Nothing is departing to land at Vancouver at this time.
EDIT: The title is confusing to read, there's 2 statements.
What STT system / model are you using?
I had a plan to try something like this from where I live, but I wasn't sure how to solve those two problems.
Not mine, I just found it 2 hours ago.. No mention of it on HN so not sure what others think about it.
The post title is implying that Victoria airport is also subject to a ground stop.