MLAT

[GreekSpy2001]

Hi all

I see a number of reports on the MILScanners forum of people plotting the whereabouts of certain US Mil movements over the UK.  They say they are using MLAT.  Is tthis a feature of a combination of the SBS-1 box and PlanePlotter using a form of triangulation?

ASsume not a feature enabled on RDB? Will it be in the next verson?  If not could I sign up with PlanePlotter and get a view of of this without the SBS-1?

Thanks

Graham

[Allocator]

Graham,

As far as I'm aware, this isn't a feature on RB or the SBS-1.

I've browsed the SBS-1 forum and the PlanePlotter forum and it looks like it is possible to hack the SBS-1 software and use the data in a simple form of MLAT, but when I last looked, it looked VERY complicated.  Maybe things have moved on since then?

As this uses live data from the SBS-1 and shares it, maybe this is on the boundary of being legal?

Best place to ask the question is on the SBS-1 forum or the PlanePlotter forum.

[DaveReid]

I see a number of reports on the MILScanners forum of people plotting the whereabouts of certain US Mil movements over the UK.  They say they are using MLAT.  Is tthis a feature of a combination of the SBS-1 box and PlanePlotter using a form of triangulation?

ASsume not a feature enabled on RDB? Will it be in the next verson?  If not could I sign up with PlanePlotter and get a view of of this without the SBS-1?

MLat (i.e. Multilateration) is a system that can be implemented by taking advantage of a serendipitous feature of the SBS-1 whereby very accurate TDOA (time difference) data can be derived for any Mode S aircraft (with or without ADS-B) that's being picked up simultaneously by 3 or more receivers.  Clearly in the case of non-ADS-B aircraft such as bizjets, spamcans and military, this enables the user to track aircraft that coudn't previously be located.

Whether that constitutes a hack or not is a moot point - it's not a patch as such, but works by substituting the FTD USB driver with a replacement that allows access to the USB data stream.  The resulting TDOA data is then processed by the PlanePlotter server.  As for the legality, the PlanePlotter folks seem to be taking a responsible attitude by a) monitoring who's using the facility and b) making it possible only to get one-off position fixes in near-real-time, but not possible to do continuous real-time tracking.

N.B. the above applies only to SBS-1, AFAIK although there exists a comparable USB driver replacement for RadarBox that gives access to the USB data stream, the latter doesn't contain any timing data that can be used for MLat.

HTH
Dave

[OKC-Steve]

Typical to all things about mode-s, it's just another proprietary "broken on purpose" mode.  I looked at it as a waste of time, because it is completely manual, and in the end would be boring to do even after 5 minutes.

I use flightaware to look at where non-position targets are.  I don't really care about mil targets.

[DaveReid]

I looked at it as a waste of time, because it is completely manual, and in the end would be boring to do even after 5 minutes.

The PlanePlotter guys could tell you how to do it in real-time, but then they'd have to shoot you  :-)

[OKC-Steve]

I should probably say, the nearest sbs spotter to me is about a 1000 miles away anyway...

Not to give praise for developing the concept, but the user interface is sort of like my dad's old Ford when I was a kid, where you had to crank the engine by hand...