Introduction The RTL-SDR can conveniently be used to check both VHF Air & VHF Marine weather. Figure 1 shows the receive schematic. Recently a significant cyber security outage affected millions of Windows computers all around the world. I offer two simple solutions that can be easily applied before more outages happen. Receive Block Diagram Figure… Continue reading RTL-SDR for VHF Air_AM/VHF Marine_FM Weather & Cyber Security
Marine GMDSS/NAVTEX MF Decoder
Introduction In previous posts I looked at various aspects of decoding BFSK GMDSS/DSC using GNURadio, SDRangel, Multipsk and Scicos. In the last post I used a BPF Non-Coherent GNURadio FSK decoder to decode random data (Ref.1). In this post I will use the same decoder to examine a short GMDSS/NAVTEX BFSK message (Ref.2). BFSK BPF… Continue reading Marine GMDSS/NAVTEX MF Decoder
OpenPlotter3 – AIS & GPS on RPi3B
Introduction Recently I revisited OpenPlotter after a two year interval to see what had changed in the latest version 3 (Ref.1/3). I tested the Starter and Headless images and setup AIS & GPS on RPi4/OpenCPN. In 2021 I had looked at various aspects of version 2 (Ref.4/5). In this post I will look at OpenPlotter3… Continue reading OpenPlotter3 – AIS & GPS on RPi3B
CelNav Victoria Day Lunar Distance
Introduction I just finished a very interesting book about Capt. Cook’s third and final voyage – “The Wide Wide Sea” by Hampton Sides (Ref.1). So I thought it would only be appropriate on Victoria Day to take a lunar measurement as Capt. Cook might have taken. Apparently he also took a K1 chronometer made by… Continue reading CelNav Victoria Day Lunar Distance
OpenPlotter3 – Marine NAVTEX
Introduction In the previous post I looked at using OpenPlotter3 for receiving HF Weather Fax (Ref.1). In this post we will use OpenPlotter3 to receive Marine MF NAVTEX (Ref.2). NAVTEX transmissions contain valuable marine information such as navigation warnings, weather forecasts, ice information and MSI specific messages. The world is divided into different regions and… Continue reading OpenPlotter3 – Marine NAVTEX