Category Archives: Hardware

Stridsberg MCA204M multicoupler has arrived!

The 204M has arrived! For those who don’t know what the heck this is, the 204m will allow up to 4 radios or scanners to be hooked up to one antenna and isolated from one another. Along with installing the Stridsberg, I’ll be upgrading some of the hardware:

  • Upgrading the KTLH audio feed from the Radio Shack Pro-2026 scanner to an Icom IC-A110 mobile aircraft radio that I’ve mentioned in a previous post.. This is the bad boy of current aircraft radios.
  • Upgrade to a second feed providing the Jacksonville Center (ZJX) remote Tallahassee frequencies. This will allow you to follow aircraft 10,000 feet plus that are flying through the ZJX area e.g. Miami to Atlanta. Lots of “high flying” activity on these frequencies.
  • Upgrading the station computer from the lousy Dell GX-150 (512kRam, 10GIg HD!!) to a Zotac MAG HD-ND01 mini PC running Win7. As you are probably aware, the Dell has been going offline quite a bit recently due to hardware & software issues. The Zotac is ready to be put in service.
  • On the horizon, I plan on replacing the 20 year old feedline going up the tower and swapping the dual band antenna for an actual antenna that is cut for the airband. This will help cover the aircraft communications on the ground and some of the low power transmitters at the airport. This will happen sometime this summer.

Right now the KTLH audio feed is playing through both speakers when you are monitoring the feed through LiveATC.net. My plans are to have the local KTLH feed on the left channel and the ZJX feed on the right channel. This way you can run both feeds if you like.

I’ll plug the yahoo group… if you want to discuss the KTLH streaming audio, join the Yahoo group by going here

…DOUG
KD4MOJ

 

The new antenna is mounted…

Yep alas… we have new antenna mounted on top of the Four Points Sheraton (not sure why they call it Four Points). We encountered some interference of the 450 Mhz trunking systems since the control channels transmit 24/7. Here is a screen shot of a plane north of Auburn AL (going from Orlando to Minneapolis) so I think that the range is acceptable! Tallahassee is in the lower right, follow the purple line to the aircraft, then look on the left for the lat/long data. Normally the aircraft is in yellow but since I clicked on it for this demo it’s in red.

Range Picture of F-KTLH1

…DOUG
KD4MOJ