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General Category => General Radio Discussion => Topic started by: Molvania Poacher on February 21, 2022, 0048 UTC

Title: Interesting Amateur Radio Connection in this 60 Minutes Australia Story
Post by: Molvania Poacher on February 21, 2022, 0048 UTC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq-d4Kl8Xh4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq-d4Kl8Xh4)
Title: Re: Interesting Amateur Radio Connection in this 60 Minutes Australia Story
Post by: Charlie_Dont_Surf on February 21, 2022, 1834 UTC
Mr Godfrey is using what has been coined "GDTAAA" (Global Detection & Tracking any Aircraft Anywhere Anytime) and (as far as I can tell) it relies on disturbances in the SNR of WSPR transmissions to "follow" the aircraft path. I have not had time to read all the stuff on this but as I understand it, his GDTAAA tracking lines up with the satellite tracking to some or a complete extent.

Here is his blog: https://www.mh370search.com/2021/12/31/mh370-flight-path/ (https://www.mh370search.com/2021/12/31/mh370-flight-path/)

Here is the first part of a report that he wrote on this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/k4fn8eec4z9np0z/GDTAAA%20WSPRnet%20MH370%20Analysis%20Flight%20Path%20Report.pdf?dl=0 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/k4fn8eec4z9np0z/GDTAAA%20WSPRnet%20MH370%20Analysis%20Flight%20Path%20Report.pdf?dl=0)
Title: Re: Interesting Amateur Radio Connection in this 60 Minutes Australia Story
Post by: ChrisSmolinski on February 21, 2022, 2230 UTC
Nils Schiffhauer DK8OK wrote some interesting blog posts about this.   The best summary of this supposed technique may be "snake oil"  :)

https://dk8ok-org.translate.goog/2021/12/06/mh370-and-wspr-aircraft-scatter-on-hf-a-critical-review/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

https://dk8ok-org.translate.goog/2021/12/11/wspr-propagation-mh370-an-experiment/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Title: Re: Interesting Amateur Radio Connection in this 60 Minutes Australia Story
Post by: Charlie_Dont_Surf on March 01, 2022, 0023 UTC
Yeah. I know very little about radar but I am quite dubious of this method.

What I do know about OTHR is that it needs a very tightly-controlled set of conditions to work and I am doubtful that this is achieved with passive WSPR analysis, per the German author you linked to. The little bit that has been disclosed about his method(s) isn't that revolutionary in terms of signal analysis and if it were that good, then it would have been more widely in use already with much higher SNR signals.

Godfrey's follow up paper (which will not be as attention grabbing) better be chock full of proof of method validation results, hundreds of pages and many, many results from many, many different aircraft in a variety of conditions, etc., etc. 50/50 chance that he will claim that his algorithm, which relies on his simple little laptop post-processing a bunch of MATLAB files, is "proprietary" and he can't release it, which would have allowed others to validate his algorithm. Cold fusion, anyone?
Title: Re: Interesting Amateur Radio Connection in this 60 Minutes Australia Story
Post by: M R I on March 01, 2022, 0534 UTC
I watched many videos on MH370. Like any high profile mystery some are trying to use whatever they can to solve it. Leading to a new search and find.