AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

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VK6ADF
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Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK6ADF »

VK2GOM wrote:I am STILL getting emails from marinetraffic.com every couple of hours telling me my station is offline :twisted: Yes, I know, thanks for reminding me :roll: It's getting to be a pain and if I'm not on top of my emails it starts filling up with these stupid emails.

I thought I had them defeated on the profile page, but they still keep coming.

Can anyone please advise how to prevent them?

As a last resort I can mark them as spam and get them deleted at the server before they make it to my PC.

73 - Rob VK2GOM / G0MOH
Haven't you got a hotmail junk email address? Get one and put that in your data for your email address and then sit back and let it fill up. You can then go in once and a while and delete all junkmail.

The other way around this is send the data direct to aprs.fi

aprs.fi then share the data with Marine Traffic so it appears on their pages. You can then view past tracks on aprs.fi as you can with aprs traffic. Thats what I do. You do not need an account on Marine Traffic then. When you login to aprs.fi and go to your account the address and your AIS login are automatically allocated. Then you just put the data in the relvant section of your software assuming it allows it.

I won't advertise the commercial software I use here but I think you all know anyway, so don't know if you can do the same with other software.
73 Phil...VK6ADF
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9A4CU
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Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by 9A4CU »

Pretty good reception by Alek,VK6APK at 11 UTC from Binningup.
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Source: www.fleetmon.com
Source: www.fleetmon.com
Last edited by 9A4CU on Sat Dec 17, 2011 3:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
VK2KRR

Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK2KRR »

VK6APK does quite well with his AIS a lot, ive seen some very long distance spots to the north from Alek.
VK2KRR

Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK2KRR »

Hi Guys, received my first AIS Marine signal (162 MHz) this morning at 3.32 am. :D

Came from ship Safmarine Meru, which was located SW of Warrnambool off the VK3 coast. Distance from here was 595 Km.
Safmarine Meru ship
Safmarine Meru ship
Map
Map
The signals are only 12 Watts to an omni vertical antenna, Im using a 10 ele yagi here @ 30ft. No pre-amp yet. This is only a temp set up for the moment.
VK2FAK

Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK2FAK »

Hi all....

Well Leigh, the hard work finally pays off....now you have a coastline of beacons........congrats.


Question though.....if your looking for a specific propagation condition....doesn't improving the antenna setup defeat the purpose.....I thought the idea was to let the conditions do the work, not the antenna.....? ( within reason of course ).

John
VK2KRR

Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK2KRR »

Hi John

Good question.

When you have a specific antenna set up, eventually you get to know what you can term as good conditions and what is poor (and what is extraordinary!). Takes time to work it out but you get the jist of things eventually.

And so with AIS Marine traffic, I can now keep track of the specific ships that I hear signals from. Some ships may have a better overall AIS set up than other ships, better antennas, coax, higher antenna position, less obstructions etc. So in that regard, you may work out over time that one ship is easier to get a signal from than others etc.

Then there is the rate of signals, how many position reports you are getting from one ship or another. So say I got 5 reports from Safmarine Meru at the position I did this morning, then another time I may end up getting 20 or 30 over a wider span of area, so I can then say the conditions must be slightly improved to be hearing that many signals.

Being as far as I am from the coast, I can do with some more gain to provide a little more signals through the down times if possible. These will pressumably mainly be off the VK3 coast west of Melbourne, Im hoping to be able pull some signals out of Port Phillip bay Melbourne at some stage, thats what I was aiming for when this one came in from Warrnambool.

The ultimate purpose is to be looking out across the waters of the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to see how far conditions may extend the signals in those good times. Phil VK5AKK has already shown some impressive results with signals about 700 Km west of Perth.

The other thing im now making use of is, every ship or other craft that I receive, Im assigning them to my list of "Fleet" vessels. This is a feature on Marine Traffic.com. So I can click on that link and go and see the vessels I have saved in my Fleet and see there current status and where they are, there itinery, and other details. So when one of them sets sail, I'll know they may be coming back near a position where I have received them before, so I can keep the antenna in a certian direction and have a look for them if I wish to.

So I think summing it up John, even if I had 4 yagis on the system, there is still the ability to know when the conditions are good or bad by looking at the data gained over time, such as distance, number of individual ships, rate of reports received and beam heading. Could be others too but Im only just at the beginning and still learning :D
VK2KRR

Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK2KRR »

An interesting spot I noted on the past 24 hour map from VK6HV running station 62 in NW VK6. Spot is located near Vietnam, see arrow in image below.
Station 62
Station 62
Not sure if VK6HV is on the logger but if he is, can you provide any further details for this spot ?
VK2KRR

Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK2KRR »

Just wondering if anyone may be interested in setting up an AIS receive station around Warrnambool, Portland or Mt Gambier areas, as its a bit of a black spot through there at the moment, there is no one covering the area.
Once ships leave Port Phillip Bay area into Bass Strait heading west, they lose coverage as there is no stations close to the coast in that section.
So if anyone is interested, you may already have an old rig or scanner that could do the job, you just need to make a simple antenna and feed the data back to marine traffic .com.

I think they would possibly send you out a free dedicated receiver, but Im not sure on that one.
VK2KRR

Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK2KRR »

Phil VK5AKK,
Would you say that, the only reason your getting stuck at say 140 miles distance is because there isn't actually any other ships in the area? or are the conditions just really not that good?

Also, I have analysed my 10 ele AIS yagi over the weekend and found it was resonant off freq at 150 MHz! I have now tuned it up to 162 MHz here its now reading 1.06:1 SWR, which Im happy with. Ive also connected up a pre-amp up near the antenna last night, so hope that helps.
VK5AKK
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Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK5AKK »

Leigh,
My normal max distance with no troppo is 65 nautical miles. The 140nm distance that commonly shows up is my distance to Pt Lincoln where there are always fishing boats etc parked, but this requires a little local troppo. I am not using my preamp at the moment as I am rebuilding it with relays, so that it can be bypassed during thunderstorms. I have moved the antenna to a different tree, about 20 meters west of the tower, still fed with LDF5-50.
Good on your spots of the SAR plane and your first ship, the now resonant yagi and preamp must help even more. Adelaide has very little shipping traffic, but there is busy stream of ships 400km south of me and an AIS station on the coast south of Mt Gambier would really show this. It will be interesting to see if we get any spots via E's in the next month. The sweet spot distance for single hop E's is 1500- 2100km.
Cheers
Phil
VK2KRR

Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK2KRR »

Hi Phil, thanks for the info.
Yes nothing RXd yet with the resonant antenna and pre-amp :cry:

And yes, as I mentioned on a previous post, a station down Mt Gambier, Portland or Warrnambool would really help give us a better picture of the ships moving about that area.

Yes, I'm looking all the time on extended map views to see if anyone has received any strange signals from Sporadic E. There will certainly be some quite amazing data come out of it when it happens.
Another thing i've noticed on your long distance spots near Albany and beyond, is that there appears to be almost a tropo skip zone on reception of ships south of Esperance. Not sure if you noticed that, but there was definately ships in that area that you weren't spotting, yet you were getting ones near Albany, was quite interesting.

The actual tropo conditiions have shown no life much at all above normal levels since I got the first ship last Thursday morning, and even then it was pretty poor. Mt Gambier was only up 1 to 2 S points above normal. So the only way is up, but its certainly tough going at the moment on the tropo front from here.
VK2KRR

Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK2KRR »

I was able to get a ship signal last night, type 1 msg from "Tasmanian Achiever" ship at 1358 UTC.
The ship was approx half way between Melbourne, heading to Burnie in the Bass Strait, it was 495 Km from my QTH.
Just waiting for the 24 hour map to be updated to see the spot on map. :D
VK2KRR

Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK2KRR »

AIS Marine spot received last night at 1358utc from the "Tasmanian Achiever" ship travelling from Melbourne to Tasmania, was 491 Km from here out in the Bass Strait. Over the weekend I tuned my antenna very sharply & have added a pre-amp. Hope to see a few more spots come in soon, as condx were quite average overnight really.
Tasmanian Achiever spot
Tasmanian Achiever spot
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9A4CU
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Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by 9A4CU »

Another "heat up" today on VK6 coast by VK6APK. I took it about 07.15 UTC.Well done,Alek!

73
Sinisa
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VK6APK.JPG
VK6APK.JPG (10.33 KiB) Viewed 2352 times
VK6APK-1.JPG
VK2KRR

Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK2KRR »

Hi Sinisa

Yes, I heard about this also, and I believe Phil VK6ADF is also doing quite well.

This afternoon Ive also RXd signals from a tanker called Ambelos, in the Port Phillip Bay area near Melbourne, 354 Km from here.
VK2KRR

Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK2KRR »

Its certainly good to see Derek VK6DZ easily breaking his all time distance record for AIS reception last night. Right up to NW corner of VK6, great stuff. This was 1647 Km.
VK6DZ records
VK6DZ records
VK5AKK
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Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK5AKK »

Amazing troppo again from VK6APK. Perhaps someone smarter than myself could post his last 24 hour map.
Cheers
Phil
VK2KRR

Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK2KRR »

Yes VK6APK has, from what I can work out, heard signal from about 2260 Km away to his north.
Also of note is his reception around into the Bight, SSE of Esperance.
VK6APK AIS
VK6APK AIS
VK2KRR

Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK2KRR »

An interesting one from Station 831 Darwin that I found, happened in past 3 hours. Spot located out in Indonesian waters.
Indonesia spot station 831 Darwin
Indonesia spot station 831 Darwin
VK2KRR

Re: AIS Marine Traffic Tracking (tropo indicator)

Post by VK2KRR »

Thanks to Phil VK6ADF who assisted me in setting up Shipplotter last night, I have had a really successful morning with AIS signal decoding and plotting.

Conditions picked up this morning into the Melbourne area and I was able to pick up approx 20 seperate ships and about 200 msg decodes some out to nearly 400 Km.

Most signals were confined to Port Phillip Bay area and lasted till about 11am.
VK2KRR
VK2KRR
This is a pick of a anchored ship with my call attached as the source.
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