Home Location???

[cosmoc]

hi all
i just got my RB this morning. i have set it up and found somthing that is confusing me!
when it asks for the closest city i select the appropriate city which is sydney. when i do this the home marker is not over my actual place of residence but it give's me a better view of YSSY. then when i chose my actual place of residence i do not get as good a view of YSSY and i have not moved my aerial during this time. any help would be fantastic
thanks :)

[Roadrunner]

The idea with putting your actual Lat?Long in the settings gives you a more acurate centre for the Home location. Sydney is no doubt a very large city so your location could be many miles out. I have mine set as in UK can use the post-code to get within a few metres of it but if I pick my local town it does not recognise it so I then have to use London - which is 28 miles away. You can have your local settings in and perhaps make that the default map but have other maps created for the Airports for when you want them to centre on your display.

Regards

Mike

[Allocator]

Cosmoc,

Lat an Lon is the way ahead to get an accurate home position, however, it really doesn't matter what you put in here!  You could set you home to London UK and your local traffic would still show up just the same.  The position of aircraft on the map is plotted by their lat and lon as broadcast by their Mode S boxes.  All the Home location does is make it easy for you to see when aircraft pass close to you.  It also allows the range rings and polar diagram to be drawn relative to your home position, rather than from a random place.  the Free Google Earth program give a lat and lon readout.

When I go to Manchester International Airport (EGCC) which is aboy 60 miles away, I don't bother resetting home to EGCC, I just drag the map so it covers the new area I'm watching.  You can just drag the map using the mouse and the left mouse button.

Hope this makes sense :-)

Allocator

[cosmoc]

hi all
thanks for the replies. i was manily confused because when i chose my closest city my coverage of the airport was better than when i chose my long and lat. appart from that i am loving the RB all i want to do now is incress the range!
 thanks!:-)

[DaveReid]

Interesting debate.

Having studied the ADS-B lat/lon encoding/decoding algorithm extensively in connection with SBS-1 position issues, I'm interested in the "official" AirNav view re setting RadarBox home position.

In the SBS case, airborne positions are rarely, if ever, affected by changing the home position, whereas ground positions DO use the home location as part of the decoding process (documented in the manual).  The ground position encoding is based on a 90nm grid, so if your position is out by just a few miles you're probably OK as long as aircraft aren't on the other side of a grid boundary from your home location.  The further out you are, the more likely you are to get positions decoded incorrectly.

Is this the same with RadarBox?  Cosmoc's experience would suggest that it is.

[Allocator]

Cosmoc,

I don't really understand your comment about the coverage of the airport being better with the closest city selected as home.  As I said below, the performance of your RadarBox is unaffected by what you put in as home, it only affects how the map is displayed and you can drag that around anyway.

Have fun :-)

Allocator

[Allocator]

Dave,

Interesting observation - I remember this discussion on the Kinetic forum.

You could be right here - I didn't see any ground contacts when I took the RadarBox up to EGCC, the aircraft just disappeared when they landed.  As I didn't set a new home position, maybe they were there, but I was just looking in the wrong place?  I also remember some discussion about the Mode S being switched off as the weight came onto the gear when the aircraft touched down - I don't think that this was every really answered.

We need somebody close enough to an airport to see ground contacts to test this.

[pcochrane12]

hi allocator
im 8.3nm from the 25 threshold at newcastle and have watched klm 958 taxi from the terminal along the parrallel taxi to the 25 hold then line up and roll while taxing there was no speed or elevation info but once rolling this info was given
cheers paul

[pcochrane12]

follow up to last post easy 6481 has just rolled at newcastle but was not shown  while taxing

[Allocator]

Paul,

What happens if you set your home location to a different place, do you still get the ground contacts at Newcastle in the right place?

[pcochrane12]

just tried it and still get ground traffic no prob

[Allocator]

Thanks for that Paul :-)

[RodBearden]

I'm currently looking at Vienna on RB (LOWW) and there are about 10 returns from the ground there, all showing airspeeds of about landing speed.

Explain that! :-)

Rod

[Allocator]

Network data that has failed to time-out?

LOWW is 600ft amsl according to Wikipedia.  Quite a lot of the returns I can see are indicating around 850 ft on the LOWW QNH of 1016.  So maybe these are aircraft where the contact was lost on short finals and they haven't times out as they are supposed to?

[RodBearden]

Hmmm... maybe, Allocator, but the position information for most of them seems corrrect. eg on various parts of the ramps or taxiways, but the speeds aren't. Could it be that speed ceases to be transmitted at touchdown, while position is updated.

I noticed at Manchester last week that most aircraft seem to turn off their ADS-B while weight is on the wheels, yet I followed a B763 right from power on at T2 out to the far hills!

All seems a bit random to me!

Rod