Land Based Radar

milltech

milltech

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I'm overlooking the straits of Gibraltar, maybe 20 miles and North Africa perhaps 30 miles. We're a 200 feet above sea level, maybe a bit more and I thought it would be fun to strap a radar scanner with AIS to the chimney. My question is really, can these output to a regular LCD TV, I thought it would be fun to ID big ships and their types running through the straits on our TV.
 
Why a radar and AIS?

And if you just want to identify big ships, you don't need the radar since they will all be transmitting AIS. Thus saving about £1500.

(All right, there might be the odd rogue one without, but since you're not risking collision with them, it doesn't matter.)

I have a cheap hobbyist AIS receiver connected to an aerial on my roof, allowing me to display ships on my computer; I use a piece of Mac software called SkunkTracker. It doesn't make sense to buy a Mac just to display one thing on your telly, but there's a variety of Linux software to do the same. You might even find that a Raspberry Pi will do the job, and in fact that has an HDMI output that will connect straight to your telly :encouragement:

Or just use http://www.marinetraffic.com :)

Pete
 
A quick bit of googling around and yep, if you want to watch ships on your telly, I reckon dAISy and a Raspberry Pi are the way to go. Here's someone doing exactly this:

https://mvcesc.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/opencpn-on-the-raspberry-pi-2-with-ais/

I reckon you can safely ignore the first part where he's messing around with terminal commands and screen - that's just testing that the dAISy is working. But there's no reason to assume it won't, so you can skip all that unless you encounter problems. So in fact, all he does is run OpenCPN and choose the dAISy from a menu - doing the same with SkunkTracker and AISDetective (another piece of Mac software) worked just like that for me too.

Pete
 
milltech said:
I'm overlooking the straits of Gibraltar, maybe 20 miles and North Africa perhaps 30 miles. We're a 200 feet above sea level, maybe a bit more and I thought it would be fun to strap a radar scanner with AIS to the chimney. My question is really, can these output to a regular LCD TV, I thought it would be fun to ID big ships and their types running through the straits on our TV.
Click to expand...

I suspect that running a private shore based unlicenced radar system (scanner?) will bring you some unwanted attention, your transmissions will be obvious and suspicious. Nice to do though if you are ignored by the authorities.

Edit: beaten to it.
 
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AHoy2 said:
I suspect that running a private shore based unlicenced radar system (scanner?) will bring you some unwanted attention, your transmissions will be obvious and suspicious. Nice to do though if you are ignored by the authorities.
Click to expand...

If they were to express the same level of interest as they do over unlicenced commercial radio stations I doubt I would need to worry! However your point had not occurred to me, my main response to it being, OK so the idea is still a good one for me but the investment needs to be low. I suppose actually that an Internet subscription might deliver the same result.
 
milltech said:
If they were to express the same level of interest as they do over unlicenced commercial radio stations I doubt I would need to worry! However your point had not occurred to me, my main response to it being, OK so the idea is still a good one for me but the investment needs to be low. I suppose actually that an Internet subscription might deliver the same result.
Click to expand...

If you are actually on the Rock, given the specific circumstances of GIb (you just have to look at the antenna arrays hanging off the place, for starters) I reckon there is a better than evens chance such a transmission would be picked up and investigated. I certainly would advise against it and in favour of the AIS option.
 
Elecglitch said:
If you are actually on the Rock, given the specific circumstances of GIb (you just have to look at the antenna arrays hanging off the place, for starters) I reckon there is a better than evens chance such a transmission would be picked up and investigated. I certainly would advise against it and in favour of the AIS option.
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No I'm not on the rock, horrible place but some benefits like an English language cinema that shows plays and opera live sometimes, and Morrisons, less important now we have an Iceland/Waitrose franchise in Spain. I'm a bit north east of there.

Funny thing about Morrisons, they must have supply chain issues, normally if there's one special thing you want it's missing off the shelves!
 
AHoy2 said:
I suspect that running a private shore based unlicenced radar system (scanner?) will bring you some unwanted attention, your transmissions will be obvious and suspicious. Nice to do though if you are ignored by the authorities.

Edit: beaten to it.
Click to expand...

Could even get a guided missile through your front door. LOL
 
Hi All

I responded specifically to some posts that hit my inbox and was completely unaware of others that had not. Thanks to everyone who replied, I will follow all that up. We're finally upgrading to a big TV next month and I fancied something more interesting in the room than a black screen. (Especially as our Internet connection is not good enough for UK TV).
 
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