acars.adsbexchange

[Eagle130]

After a browser update I can now at least get some messages through those links provided by Slogen (Thanks for them!) but I must agree it is clunky to say the least, I still cant seem to search by Hex code for example.

After having had a bit of a look around the site, I am struck with just how well the acars.adsbexchange site worked. The functionality seems to be unmatched which is testament to all the hard work put in by thebaldgeek!

I suppose this will be a case of getting used to a new format over time as some messages are better than none at all...

[slogen51]

Icao address/ hex code search does work

(85-0003) requested the Ramstein weather

https://app.airframes.io/messages/histo ... cao=AE0560

[slogen51]

Either I don't understand the text search or it doesn't work as expected

https://app.airframes.io/messages/histo ... cao=AE5BC2

16-46017 AE5BC2 KC-46 on the 25/11 clearly contains CLEAN52 in the messages but although the hexcode search finds the messages searching by CLEAN52 returns no results which is about as much use as a haddock in a formula 1 car!

By the way, don't forget to press or click search

By the way I am using an android device.

[slogen51]

'RCH

https://app.airframes.io/messages/histo ... &text=,RCH

[simon]

Thanks Eggman and Slogen51 for the links…duly bookmarked. It seems the search Icon disappears simply clicking on messages.

I guess as TBG is still feeding Airframes a lot of his knowledge is hopefully being passed onto the sires developers…if it ain’t broke, why fix it sort of thing. I really liked the regional satlinks, especially for Europe and Middle East and hopefully it’s something that will be developed over time as at present knowing the users location is very spurious as it looks to be based on IP address rather than physical locality.

Looking forward to seeing how things progress. I just wish I was a bit more tech-savvy to lend some time to the development.

Cheers
Simon

[thebaldgeek]

Thanks for all the tips and helping each other out here.
I am passing a lot of the feedback on to the airframesio guys.
He and I have talked in the past about how to include things like the mission codes and military movements ACARS. Those were two constantly popular pages on the site.

tbg.

P.S Looks like my site has been thrown a lifeline.
More to come soon I hope.

[Eggman]

Would be fantastic if you were able to bring your site back baldgeek really missing it already

[slogen51]

I would be happy to subscribe to acar.adsbexchange or see paid advertising but I guess I one issue is who owns the Acars messages - I assume they are intended to be private between recipients and senders?

I am uncertain of the law regarding the status of the message once it has been broadcast unencrypted - perhaps broadcast is the wrong word as the message has a recipient icao address and therefore is not a traditional broadcast "of one to many " ?

[POL]

I am uncertain of the law regarding the status of the message once it has been broadcast unencrypted - perhaps broadcast is the wrong word as the message has a recipient icao address and therefore is not a traditional broadcast "of one to many " ?

Very much depends on the country you're listening in.

In the UK it's pretty simple, if you're not the intended recipient, it's illegal to listen to a broadcast (hence it's not technically legal to listen to ATC) but in the US, "the sky" is public property, so anything broadcast into it is publicly available, hence why ATC can be broadcast online.

Germany and France are like the UK, whereby it's verboten and très illégal, respectively.

[slogen51]

In this case you are reading the contents of a web site - the owner presumably needs to be aware of the local rules

[POL]

The normal boilerplate terms and conditions "something something the owner accepts no liability for the content of this website something something" should do the trick.

Really it's up to the people receiving the signals and feeding the data that would fall fowl of the law. Of course, the same probably applies to ADS-B data and nobody really cares about that either!

[slogen51]

I don't care either really but I do care the owner doesn't get into trouble.

I was suggesting I would subscribe to a web site that presented such data in a useable format but selling the data could present legal issues for the website owner. Similar conundrum for advertisers ?

[Eagle130]

You are right Slogen, the sale of such data does create issues with the legality of how the data was obtained in the first place, its a bit of a grey area.

I would also like to add the intellectual property (IP) rights conversation comes into the discussion somewhat. As a feeder, you are technically generating IP for yourself, in the same way that someone on YouTube might film a clip of a tree (capturing readily available information anyone can access) they have generated IP specific to themselves through the input of effort into the filming. Then by editing the video in any way, even just downloading it from the computer and re-uploading it to YouTube, the data associated with that video becomes their own in the online world, with associated rights not to be plagiarised. Noting that YouTube is a slightly different case as they still own some of the rights to the participants IP but the concept should hopefully make sense, allow me to elaborate in a more realistic setting.

For example, someone picks up ACARs messages from the open source sky (as per American rules POL mentioned) and decodes them through the software in their feeder or however it works to convert the signal of a transmitted electromagnetic wave/Binary signal into the text displayed on a screen. That simple act of capturing and decoding the message has generated IP, even if multiple feeders collect the same signal, each instance will be slightly different, thus individualised IP. Once that data is sent out to a hosting site such as ADSB exchange or the previous ACARs site, that individual has a right to the intellectual property they have generated. Thus getting complicated when it comes to the website trying to sell data they may not have the IP rights to. Not sue if any of the sites have a clause to mitigate this in the T's and C's (I'm sure they might but I don't feed so I am unsure).

Such a clause would effectively render the feeder unable to reclaim their data as their own or any associated profits made by the website through sale of such data, arguably not acceptable especially if you have not been told as such in the initial agreement. This is why typically there is some form of payment for the feeder data, take the FR24 provision of electronics to feed with and a free business subscription if you feed, in this case there has then been a fair exchange of goods/services (IP for Subscription) and everyone is happy without legal difficulties. This would all be outlined in the T's and C's in the user agreement that gets signed and agreed before the exchange takes place, entering the feeder into a legally binding contract with the website.

Speculating a little bit here but I wonder if this is also why ADSB Exchange itself hasn't moved to a paid membership style approach like FlightRadar24 has. I was expecting the sale of the company to result in a paid style approach for the service and maybe that is still in the pipework but as of the current moment, it is not implemented. I would expect this might be because when the current feeder network started to feed their data, there was no explanation of what might happen should their data be sold. The data is currently available for purchase through the use of an application programming interface (API) so I would expect there is already some clause in place here. However, Sale to the general public comes under different regulations.

A big caveat here to end, I absolutely do not have all the information on how this works on a case by case basis and I have not read any contracts between a feeder and the website so this is just speculation. The point I am getting at is without proper management and legal advice/ mitigations IP as a general area can become an extremely tricky subject for businesses to deal with. I have no doubt that the aforementioned companies are acting with correct intent and taking the appropriate steps to maintain legal compliance.

[slogen51]

Getting a bit away from the main issue perhaps but I don't think intellectual property is an issue for us as I can't see how intellectual property can arise from a third party unofficially intercepting and reading addressed messages .

I am certainly not a legal beaver and the fact that the electromagnetic energy from the transmitter has entered your house might entitle you to decode the transmission and read what it says - my question and it isn't really important is more along the lines of are you allowed to reproduce the messages for money - the subject is largely moot as the websites are free to access - the owners of the commercial acars systems around the world (is it only ARINC) may say the messages belong to themselves.
Similar to having a dodgy device that lets you decode SKY TV signals - Sky don't like it

I think what I am trying to say is that ACARS is different to voice radio broadcasts and adsb signals in that ACARS is a commercial system or aviation post office that users ( airlines, the military, governments) pay to use and the company or companies undertake to deliver messages on behalf of the senders and may take a dim view of messages being read and resold to spotters.

I stress I am not complaining - it doesn't do any harm and it's difficult for the authorities to monitor so rather like listening to airband radio a blind eye is turned to it.

VHF acars decoders have been around for years as I remember the old days of the dongle linked to the ear jack of a VHF radio and also plugged into a lap top which was running some proprietary software

[thebaldgeek]

For as long as I can, I don't intend to put my site behind a paywall or add any ads.
ie, it will be open, public and free.

Really interesting discussion going on here.
Loving it!

[slogen51]

Filter on MDINI/ID seems to give US Mil initialization messages which includes the all important from / to destination items

https://app.airframes.io/messages/histo ... =last-week

MDINI/ID00176A,RCH836,JBZGDG50F331/MR0,0/AFKBGR,ETAR/TD280215,02154C2D
C-17 00176 departing from Bangor at 02:15 going to Ramstein

There are a lot of duplicate messages in the system as many feeders are picking up the same messages

( It amuses me that FC is so against Airfield ICAO codes but as we can all see they are fundamental to an interest in aviation movements : just get to know the popular ICAO codes EGUN EGUL ETAR EGLL EGSS etc)

[AyrForce1]

I understand where you are coming from on IP and perhaps we have digressed so if I may, I will close off with a final thought for you and others who may be reading this, consider the capture of photographs - you are taking readily available electromagnetic waves (albeit of a different wavelength in the visible spectrum!) and expending energy to capture those waves and process into a format that is unique to yourself. Through doing this you neither own the aircraft you have photographed, nor have definitive rights to be the only one able to photograph said aircraft. Instead you merely have a representation of the data at a given moment in time which you yourself have captured. That given representation is your IP. While the application is completely different to ACARs messages, the concept remains true, taking freely available information and processing it through expenditure of energy (be that time, money or computing resource) generates IP in that given snapshot in time. Like you said it gets extremely complicated when the overall legality of the interception of messages but that is the concept for IP generation.

Having IP may not always equate to the right to publish/sell it online though. The most obvious and shocking example being night time photographs that you take of the Eiffel Tower, which legally (unless they repealed it?) you can't publish or sell online even though you took the photo. Of course, that's mostly about as enforceable as the W&T law prohibiting UK citizens from listening to ATC, but the "mostly" here has potential to be problematic for those using the photo commercially, which I mention because if they can do it for the Eiffel Tower then you can't just blindly assume there would never be problems (now, or in the future) with other forms of 1's and 0's used in a commercial manner, despite how ridiculous such a law may be. Also, I believe, the threat of legal action is the reason that LiveATC doesn't broadcast any UK feeds even though the 1's and 0's are freely available to capture.

[Eagle130]

Yeah completely agreed, ownership does not equal ability to sell directly which ties into what Slogen mentioned about the legality of the website actually selling that data neglecting the IP issues. I have head of that example with the Eiffel Tower and it is bizarre...!

I think your reasoning is correct about liveATC too!

[thebaldgeek]

My L-Band filters consisted of: INITIALIZE, INI/, #MDFTX/, /MC/, MDREQPOS/ID, M2BPOS, #M1BPOS/, FPN/I, FPN/F, FPN/R, #M1BPRG, #M2BPRG

The # and / are important, hard to see here, but there is also some white space around some and that helped pull them out of the original ACARS accurately and also I did those filters in the order listed, so if a message matched the first one, it dropped out of the code and did not check against the others following it.
Regarding the dupes, yes, I had more than one feed on L-Band (only the one feed from three of the 5 sats on C-band) and did the de-dup in my site before it got to any of the filters.
I will pass on the 'annoying' dupe comment to the airframes guys.

[slogen51]

/AMCTACC

https://app.airframes.io/messages/histo ... =last-week

MDWXR
https://app.airframes.io/messages/histo ... =last-week

The MD prefix does seem to pick out USAF flights - mostly C-17

RAF voyagers are easy - just use ICAO EGVN ( Brize)

Airframes.io front end search page is in early days of development I would suggest - it would be nice to have an array of military orientated search criteria that the users ( spotters!) can select from plus

It shouldn't be that difficult to provide a distinct list of active aircraft from the past three to four hours - a basic select distinct ICAO address joined to the serial list or even just a distinct list of callsigns +ID that are active and then use that result as a pick list to further filter on messages from a particular Aircraft of interest?