Theoretical range of coverage

To judge the actual range, one needs to first know what kind of range is even possible for the station's location. 1090 MHz reception requires a direct line of sight through air to what you want to receive, thus depends on obstacles and the curvature of the earth. To get that theoretical range for a location, follow these steps.

Create theoretical range panorama

• Visit http://www.heywhatsthat.com/.

• Click "New Panorama" at the top and you will see a page similar to the above screenshot.

  • For step 1, set the location (via address or lat/lon) for your antenna precisely. Alternatively you can drag and zoom the map and click on the correct location.

  • Skip step 2.

  • For step 3, enter the height of the antenna for your install in feet above ground, making sure to leave the radio button as "above ground".

  • For step 4, enter a title and click Submit Request.

• Wait for the request to finish and load a new page.

View the theoretical range

• Scroll down to the map and click the "Up in the Air" button on the top right of the map.

• Change the "30000" value below the map to "40000" (this is the maximum expected altitude of flights in your area).

  • You can change the altitudes (ft) below the map to view different outlines for your location.

  • Those outlines tell you how far you can receive aircraft at the associated altitudes.

• Zoom out a few times with the "-" (minus sign) on the map until you can see the theoretical coverage outlines. These are the orange (10,000ft) and blue (40,000ft) outlines shown in the above image.

• The panorama does not take into account obstacles closer to the antenna than approximately 100 ft, trees are also not considered but can block reception.

Integrate outline into tar1090

On the top left of the page, an URL to revisit the panorama is displayed under the title. You can see the URL in the above image https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=VDEX64QI. Copy the 8 character code at the end of the URL (VDEX64QI in this case, but yours will be different) as we will use this in the next step.

HYFIX WB200 and MGW310

On the HYFIX WB200 or MGW310, click on Settings and then Miner as shown in the above screenshot. Once the page loads you will see an option called HEYWHATSTHAT URL CODE. Paste the 8 character code you copied from the above step into the box and click Apply. You will also need to make sure the "Graphs Switch" option is set to ON so that the local tar1090 map is enabled, if you haven't previously enabled it.

You can now view the theoretical range outline by navigating back to the Device Status page and clicking on Open Tar1090. When the tar1090 display loads, if you still do not see the range outline rings please try to force-refresh the page by pressing Shift+F5. This will clear the browser cache and the range rings should now appear.

BYOD Devices

Replace the XXXXXXXX in the following command with the 8 character value copied from your panorama URL in the previous step, then run the command on your Raspberry Pi or other device:

sudo /usr/local/share/tar1090/getupintheair.sh XXXXXXXX 3048,12192

After this completes, refresh the tar1090 display (you may need to use Shift+F5 to clear the browser cache) and you should now see the theoretical range outline for aircraft at both 10000ft and 40000 ft on the map.

Toggling, updating or permanently deleting the theoretical range rings

Toggling the range rings on and off

If you would like to toggle the range rings on and off (without permanently deleting them) you can do this using the tar1090 layer picker. In the above screenshot, click on the indicated Layers/Legend button as shown on the top right of the map.

You will see an item in the list called "terrain-based range outline". If you untick this option the range rings will no longer show on the display. You can toggle this on and off at any time.

Updating the range rings

At times, you may want to update the range rings (for example you made a mistake on the panorama details or you are moving the station to a new location). This is very simple to do regardless of whether you have an approved hardware or BYOD device. First, create your new panorama and copy the 8 character code.

To update the range rings on a WB200 or MGW310 you can just follow the original setup steps again - paste the new 8 character code into the HEYWHATSTHAT URL CODE box and then click Apply.

On BYOD devices you run the command in the previous step again, but with the new 8 character code in place of the XXXXXXXX. The new panorama will be downloaded and overwrite the old one.

Permanently deleting the range rings

On WB200 or MGW310

If you want to permanently remove the theoretical range rings on a WB200 or MGW310 device, navigate back to the Settings -> Miner page, remove the code from the HEYWHATSTHAT URL CODE box so it is empty (you may see some placeholder text) and then click Apply. After clicking Apply you may see an error saying "Warning! Failed download" or similar, however if you return to the tar1090 map you will see the theoretical range rings are no longer displayed.

On BYOD

To permanently remove the theoretical range rings on a BYOD station open a command line terminal on your Raspberry Pi or other device and issue the following command to delete the range outline:

sudo rm /usr/local/share/tar1090/html/upintheair.json