Flightradar24 Aircraft Receiver

2 min read

Archive post.

Translated from Ukrainian.

Today the FR24 Box Receiver kit arrived. It’s built to receive data from the radar transponders on board aircraft, operating in Mode-AC, Mode-S and ADS-B. With this technology you can receive and decode the signals transmitted by the aircraft yourself: callsign and aircraft type, current heading and position, speed, altitude and squawk code. The data is sent automatically to the Flightradar24 website, where anyone can see the current air traffic picture.

You can read more about the technology on the radar spotters’ site adsbradar.

The whole kit came packed in a big box like this. What’s in the kit: a receiving antenna for 1090 MHz, RF coax cable, an ethernet cable, a GPS antenna, the receiver, a power supply and a mounting clamp for the antenna. As a bonus, there was a branded keychain.

The parcel came in a big box The parcel came in a big box

Everything wrapped in bubble wrap Everything wrapped in bubble wrap

That’s everything that was inside That’s everything that was inside

5 meters of Ethernet cable for the internet connection 5 meters of Ethernet cable for the internet connection

GPS antenna with a magnetic base, needed for MLAT positioning GPS antenna with a magnetic base, needed for MLAT positioning

SCO-1090-MCX 54 cm collinear antenna with a 10-meter cable SCO-1090-MCX 54 cm collinear antenna with a 10-meter cable

You can see the insides of the antenna here.

Antenna mount Antenna mount

5 V power supply for the receiver 5 V power supply for the receiver

The packaging the receiver came in The packaging the receiver came in

Now let’s look at the receiver itself. It’s a rebranded Radarcape, made by the German radio amateur Günter Köllner; right now the Radarcape sells for 624.75 €.

Front of the receiver Front of the receiver

Back side Back side

Front cover removed Front cover removed

Inside, the device is a small Linux computer based on BeagleBone with a clever radio module. The BeagleBone platform is built around an AM335x 720MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor, 256MB DDR2 RAM, 8-bit eMMC flash memory: 4GB.

The receiver section The receiver section

The receiver’s “brains” The receiver’s “brains”

First power-on and blinking lights First power-on and blinking lights

The board has a web interface you can open in a browser to watch the receiver at work.

Device status screen Device status screen

You can connect to the receiver with the Virtual Radar Server client over the Basestation protocol (port 30003) or the RAW Beast protocol (port 30334).

Aircraft received by the FR24 Box Receiver, shown in Virtual Radar Server Aircraft received by the FR24 Box Receiver, shown in Virtual Radar Server

On first power-on the receiver registers itself in the system and activates a premium account. That lets you use the FR24 site without ads and adds other features, including various statistics. Below is an example of the stats built from the data my receiver collected.

FR24 Box Receiver statistics FR24 Box Receiver statistics

RadioSDR