tbg.airframes.io

[slogen51]

New blog about a forgotten registration issue. (reg with + in them).
Please take a read and share you thoughts.

https://k6thebaldgeek.blogspot.com/2025 ... ation.html

Thanks, I see your logic and would be inclined to agree that keeping that “+” in the reg would be important - from my experience it is only German airforce aircraft that have it (happy to be corrected).

The site search doubling as an airframe lookup is something I use often so have noticed it and it’s been very helpful!

I know traditionally spotters include a '+' when recording German military serials 46+44 or 10+03 but really the '+' is a representation of the Iron Cross insignia and probably not part of the official serial? I don't know this for sure but when you look at acars messages the aircraft id is referred to as 1003 in the case of a GAF A359 for example.

[thebaldgeek]

I know traditionally spotters include a '+' when recording German military serials 46+44 or 10+03 but really the '+' is a representation of the Iron Cross insignia and probably not part of the official serial? I don't know this for sure but when you look at acars messages the aircraft id is referred to as 1003 in the case of a GAF A359 for example.

Thanks for the feedback.
On HFDL ACARS it has the + on satcom it does not.
Its this sort of variability that has been breaking my brain since I started down the ACARS rabbit hole.
I'm still tempted to have a hidden database of registrations with no - or + and use that for my site.

[thebaldgeek]

AI and LLM use is a bit of a controversial topic.
If you've been following any of my accounts, you know I've tried and mostly failed to use it to write regular expressions (REGEX) to filter ACARS messages.
I've just published a blog on a very different (for me) application of AI and semantic search in ACARS.
It's also my first guest blog from Mike, elbasatguy.

https://k6thebaldgeek.blogspot.com/2025 ... i-llm.html

[skippyscage]

I've just started using your site on a daily basis, whereas in the past I kind of forgot about in its early days.

It's become a really valuable resource for me picking out the odd bit is useful info that would otherwise be invisible to us.

thanks for supplying the platform

[thebaldgeek]

I've just started using your site on a daily basis

Thank you so much for the kind words and your daily use of the site.
Trying to keep things running and adding value as we go, so it's good to hear it's appreciated.
Not sure when we might see some of the AI tools in place, they are a bit tricky to host in a datacenter for me, but I'm working on it as I think the search will be pretty powerful.

BTW, interesting username. As an old Aussie, I straight away thought of the kangaroo in the TV show from the late 60s 'Skippy'.

[skippyscage]

BTW, interesting username. As an old Aussie, I straight away thought of the kangaroo in the TV show from the late 60s 'Skippy'.

ha, that's exactly where it came from (although I'm a Brit not an Aussie)

[thebaldgeek]

I've just done a quick copy/paste of the ACARS messages around flight AA75EF that returned to PHNL due to a bomb threat.
You can read it at the top of the page here: https://thebaldgeek.github.io/notable_flights.html