ACARS message: Coffee Maker Down!

[Richard Lee]

I've been sending Mode-S data to planefinder for a month now, and just hit 10 million lines today!

Also using an old Alinco DJ580 on 131.55 AM & PlanePlotter to listen to the rare ACARS messages in the Boston area.
Got pages of them today. Most of it is Greek to me. But, about 13 lines down, it says:
COFFEE MAKER M41 CB POPPED.

CB is geekspeak for Circuit Breaker.. Not a message I expected to see.

Once in a while, one of the ACARS messages contains position data and a little redish triangle shows up on the plot..

 

[Richard Lee]

Interestingly, the PlaneFinder (Master) on the XP PC in the basement (decoder is RTL1090 fed by dongle)
can send the ACARS data to my Win7 PC upstairs and be displayed on a 2nd copy of PlaneFinder (Slave).

That little red triangle plane off the coast, just sent his location data via ACARS on 131.55 Mhz AM..

 

[Richard Lee]

Here's my little ACARS receiver. It's connected to a tri-band ham antenna. It's for 6m, 2m, & 70cm.
The 2m section is for 144 to 148 MHz. I'm amazed it's working so well on 131.55 Mhz.
The audio output (top center) cable goes to the Mic input on the soundboard section of my old XP PC.

 

[Richard Lee]

I was a amazed once again. Using a make-shift receive rig, and picking up planes 200 miles out at sea.. Pretty cool..