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DIY DF device



 
 
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Old April 12th 04, 04:38 PM
Mattsson
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Default DIY DF device

So, this may be an utterly stupid idea, but...

I know I can get bearings from an airport, or more specifically the tower,
by using my com and talking to them when flying and within range. Also,
radio amateurs have these "fox hunts" where they hide a small tx and then
hunt it down.

Now, I have a scanner that covers the civil airbands on AM and I already
have built a few homemade base antennas for it, following some nice designs
made by others. This allows me to listen to nearby airfield traffic pattern
communication.

Now, it would be a lot of fun to be able to use my scanner with a suitable
antenna array, to get bearings to an airplane talking to for instance tower.
I know I know, you report positions most of the time, but sometimes the
small planes give pireps on local weather conditions and the like, sometimes
they just give position reports and so on, not being that accurate on their
position. At other times, spending time at relative´s summer cottages,
having the scanner with me, it would be great to quickly get info on where
to scan the sky for nearby airplanes on the air, then get the binoculars.
And as the chit chat on the airwaves usually is very brief, there is no time
to start pointing that yagi or whatever to get some idea of where the plane
is. You would need some kind of automatic direction finding, something that
would give a direction for you in a second or two.

Is there anything like this for a DIY project? I googled a bit and found a
lot on automatic FM DF projects, but not for AM. It´s understandable that
most people are interested in searching FM transmissions, especially those
interested in finding noise sources and the like, but I´m just interested in
spotting and plotting those planes up there! =)

Any thoughts and suggestions appreciated, Ken


 




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