tbg.airframes.io

[thebaldgeek]

Two major updates in the past few days.

1. You can now search by source. I removed the dropdown and you can now enter a group like 'vdl-' or a specific feeder like 'irdm-nzhn'
This is very powerful as you can either leave the other three boxes empty and just search for all messages from a given source group or feeder or combine it with any of the other search options.
One you all might like is to put a type or specific feeder in, click the military button and get all mil messages from that source.
Let me know if you miss the ability to search for an ICAO from a source. No one has complained yet.....

2. Added arinc622 decoding to all the Iridium feeders. This one is a really big deal.
I'm very interested in how you all here find Iridium with this extra detail now shown.
More details on this here: https://community.airframes.io/t/iridiu ... coding/163

[thebaldgeek]

Added two new pages to the website today.
AT1. page for civil and military.
They are mostly ATC type messages of solid value.

The other page, I got a feeling it might be just as popular as the site search page....
The 'trackmap' page.
Best way to see it in action is to visit the E6/E4 or VIP page, scroll to the bottom and click the button.

I'm thinking I might add some other groups to the page. I mean, I cant add all USAF or all RAF, nothing silly like that, but a small subset of interesting aircraft might be interesting and valuable?

Cheers.

[Eagle130]

Thanks for the updates on the site - running really well for me and enjoying exploring the new features. It is an especially valuable resource as the airframes.io appears to be having issues with text search at the moment.

The track map page is particularly interesting because if I am understanding correctly, it is showing the discrepancies between the available tracking sites? Quite a cool feature and hopefully will help in the areas where certain trackers don't work as well as others, Thank you!

After a some usage, I have a suggestion/question about whether the search by ICAO type could be expanded to include search by multiple types at once. For example when looking for initialisation messages I have typically been searching for "INI/ID" in the text search and then "K35R" in the type code before repeating for "B762" type code (to show the KC-46s) and then "DC10" in the field to give a full picture of any upcoming movements. Is there a way I could search for "K35R,B762,DC10" in the type code to group all messages together?

As always though, loads of capability in the site, keep up the amazing work!

[thebaldgeek]

Thanks for the kind words and feedback.
If you recall the v1 of my site had a 'whats new' section where I could inform folks of stuff going on with the site. No one read it.
airframes is in the same spot. He is undergoing a massive database migration, they now have three, yes, THREE BILLION ACARS messages, its a big big job to move that and keep it indexed etc.
Anyway, while migrating, you can only search the past 24 hours. So that might the 'search issues' you are finding. Be nice if he could inform users of that, but its a tough thing to do.

Yes, the new 'trackmap' page just shows iFrames of the 6 sites. I can only embed tar1090 type sites, so no flightaware, flightradar, radarbox etc is possible.
But yes, I don't tweak anything, so what you see is what they have.
I am not going to expand too much on the whole ADSB thing, that page is my weak attempt to include ADSC (oceanic) coverage that myself and the other 3 ground station owner / operators work hard to provide.
I plan to add some buttons to the top of that page so with one click you can show UAV etc. I just am not sure what groups, types or ICAOs to include in each button. Suggestions (and actual ICAO lists) apricated.

Thanks for the idea on the multi-type idea. That will need some thinking, but I am going to be tweaking the search so will keep it in mind.
The search change I am working on is to break up that last text box into two. Currently it covers 4 options, ICAO, type, reg and source.
I am going to break out two more boxes, so the 4 will be over 3 (need to keep it symmetrical for mobile users). Just not sure what two to group.
But, my point is, thanks to your post, I can keep in mind the option of having a comma list for the 'type' search.

[Eagle130]

You are most welcome, your efforts do not go unappreciated!

I do remember the change table on the old site, I must have been one of the few to read it as I found it helped to point out changes, something you are now covering in these forum posts instead which I think works just as well.

That does clear up the issue with the airframes site, a massive task at hand so can completely understand the challenges, thanks for the info as I was unaware.

Those buttons sounds like a great idea, I will have a think about some options that could be interesting, the UAV one sounds like a good place to start too. Will get back in touch when I’ve got some thoughts. Looking forward to seeing the new changes as and when they come

[thebaldgeek]

I've just now bumped the returned search results out to 100.
Hope that helps.
I am still working on the breaking up of the last text search box.
Been thinking hard how to do the multi type search. Its tricky for me. (A real programmer would have no issue I suspect).

tbg

[thebaldgeek]

I'm staring work early and will work through lunch so I can have this X Space at a better UK / Euro time.
My plan is to talk about every single page on the site. Totally unscripted.
I will be recording it, but if you have any questions, please come and ask them, or drop them here, or DM me.
https://x.com/thebaldgeek/status/1824250674181443687

[thebaldgeek]

I know folks have mixed feelings about X (Twitter), but it works for me.
I did a podcast on there a few weeks back, roughly an hour long monologue of me going through the site page by page.
I then pulled the recording and posted it on the bottom of the 'users guide' forum (no signup required) I have been maintaining.
I also added time stamps and what's talked about so you can skip around as much as you want and only listen to the bits of interest.
Really hope that it helps folks get to the know the site better, what's on each page and some of the why and how it all works.

https://community.airframes.io/t/websit ... mes-io/159

[Eagle130]

I know folks have mixed feelings about X (Twitter), but it works for me.
I did a podcast on there a few weeks back, roughly an hour long monologue of me going through the site page by page.
I then pulled the recording and posted it on the bottom of the 'users guide' forum (no signup required) I have been maintaining.
I also added time stamps and what's talked about so you can skip around as much as you want and only listen to the bits of interest.
Really hope that it helps folks get to the know the site better, what's on each page and some of the why and how it all works.

https://community.airframes.io/t/websit ... mes-io/159

Thank you for the update, definitely will find some time to have a listen through as that sounds like a great resource to have!

I know a while back you did a series of livestreams with an interactive element, completely understanding of the fact it’s a lot of effort for you to put on, but would there ever be an appetite for those to happen again ?

As ever, really appreciate the hard work you put into the site for all of us

[thebaldgeek]

Since the launch of the new version of the site, I've been doing a steady cadence of livestreams every few weeks
I've even started work at 4am so I can do a live stream in my early afternoon and thus hit around 1900 UTC vs the 2300UTC in the past.
ie, I've tried to be mindful of our Euro/UK folks.
I guess since they are on X and not recorded they are easily missed.
I've been thinking about starting a YouTube channel since the website is so visual. Its just never made sense to me to have a podcast about a visual topic.....

[Eagle130]

Excellent stuff, all the more reason to get an account for X/ Twitter, thanks for that and very nice of you to push it early to work for the European time zones.

Will keep an eye on that then, thank you!

P.s - always looking for more YouTube content so can count me in for that if you ever make one!

[TMCPC]

Hello,

Is tbg.airframes down at the moment? Coming up with zero results when searching?

Cheers TM.

[thebaldgeek]

Hello,

Is tbg.airframes down at the moment? Coming up with zero results when searching?

Cheers TM.

Not so much 'down' (site not loading at all), but yes, the site search was broken (returning zero results) for a bit.
I had to remove a lot of the fun stuff from the search for a few days while I figured out what had broken in a sqlite update, but its all back up and running now.
Sorry about the zero results.
I don't use the site every day myself and rely on people letting me know... I guess in this case everyone thought that someone else had let me know, turns out only no one did for a good while < grin >

I've had one person give me some feedback that they like that the search does not auto clear after each search any more. Hope others like it that way as well.

[thebaldgeek]

Small update.
I'm changing up the E6/E4 page a little. Reducing the size of the top table and adding the last three ACARS messages to the individual boxes at the bottom of the page.
If you have any feedback, please let me know. I'm 100% settled on the new layout, but am unsure what is lacking.

[thebaldgeek]

Another small update.
I am aware that the site is running poorly. Influx of new users (about double - which is crazy).
I am going to tweak some server settings and that will require a reboot. Not sure when exactly but in the next few days.
I hate doing them as it flushes the 48 hour site search database, but the server changes require a reboot.
Trouble is, I don't know if the server changes will help till I try them....

[Eagle130]

Thanks very much for the heads up about the reboot, good to know it’s in the pipeline.

Fingers crossed for a positive outcome from the changes, pretty cool to get so many new people involved so quickly too!

[thebaldgeek]

The last 24 hours have been pretty intense.
I finally have split he site into 4 servers, more splitting to come. Possibly.
I have split the site search, MMC Global and the USAF pages into their own servers.
This means that if you are on the USAF page (for one of three examples) the whole site is no longer loaded in the background of your browser.
This saves the server traffic/load and saves your browser and internet connection load and traffic.
So far, looking at the load times, under 250 mSec. A vast improvement.
If you hit the home page and just use the site as normal you should not really notice much different other than not having the option of moving from the USAF page to another page without going via the home page. A small price to pay?
Going to watch it for a few days, as I said, might split some more pages off.
But if it holds up, I can finally get to adding some new features without fear of slowing down the whole site.

[AyrForce1]

Don't know if this has been mentioned at all, but it looks as though on the search results page you are implementing word wrapping via forced line breaks at a particular column width.

Unfortunately if I've brought up the results of a search and then use the browser's local search function to find an ICAO code within the messages it's possible I'm going to miss a message if the ICAO code just happened to be split by your forced line breaks.

I would have thought it would be possible to post the ACARS message content raw into a suitable container and have the CSS for the container implement the word wrapping, which might solve the issue as an ICAO code would now be highly unlikely to split due to most messages having an abundance of commas/spaces/slashes in them to act as natural word-wrap points. Would probably need a bit of experimentation to ensure it wraps at a sensible point on these messages, but also at a max-width in the event of a long line of hex/text with no natural wrap points.

Would appreciate if you could consider looking at this sometime. I know it's not completely trivial and the interaction between CSS's "word-wrap", "white-space" and "max-width" would need to be looked at to see if it could be improved. There are other ways to fix it but they involve script and understandably you probably want to avoid that for resource reasons.

[thebaldgeek]

I've just finished updating the sqlite site search database.
It now is much much faster.
Since the speed is better, I have also added OR and broken out the last box into the 4 parts it used to have.
I might try extending the search db beyond 48 hours since the speed is so much faster now.

Regarding @AyrForce1 comment....
Yes, I see it and it dives me nuts.
I have spent so so so so many frustrating hours trying to get the word breaks to match between PC, tablet and phone. (The three main responsive page breaks I have set up the site for).
The other issue is that not only are the ACARS data sources formatting the ACARS differently, but once again aircraft makers, models and types format them differently, so I cant even use the raw source as the formatting.
I'm not happy with the table code I am currently using, so will have the formatting in mind when I am looking for a better table code block.

[AyrForce1]

Thanks for the reply. As a developer I fully appreciate the complexities of tables and css formatting. For what it's worth I've seen in recent decades attempts to replace tables with complex css floating divs (which can turn real ugly), but I fully believe you are correct in using tables here even if you have to jump through some hoops with the word wrapping.

I've actually solved the problem locally for me anyway by writing myself a bookmarklet script which removes the offending \r\n forced linebreaks (which I assume you added, since there are also sometimes \n linebreaks which I assume are in the original source messages) and then strategically space-stuffing the message column contents to assist the natural word-breaking. So far this seems to work very well for my display device (although it's largely untested elsewhere) and solves the problem highlighted above with local searching for airport ICAO codes, although it's currently causing another issue that I haven't got to the bottom of yet. But I mention it in case the concept of strategically space-stuffing the message gives you any ideas next time you're considering the formatting problems.