Aircraft Tracking with APRS

This page shows some of the details and links for the radio tracking system I am testing aboard various aircraft.If you put your mouse over the map, you can do things like zoom in and out or switch to satellite view. If the tracker has not been flying for the last few days the system may default to the location of the server, which is in Finland. Note that N3HGB-7 is my ham radio callsign, not the callsign of the aircraft.

 

This shows our location referenced to the weather radar.

How it works:
The system is called APRS (Automatic Position Reporting System). It was invented by Robert Bruninga (WB4APR) and used initially to track Naval Academy vessels. What the system does is basically to transmit NMEA data from a GPS via ham radio to other stations. Some of these stations will then relay the information to the Internet, which is how you are able to see me on this web site. This is kind of a "poor man's version" of ADS-B.

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