ACARS Drama (opens in new tab)

From my experience the tailwatcher and (not) suprisingly related HAM communities are magical in their ability to just trust their community and rarely get burned.

Only 4 active connections allowed per site on a popular HAM webring? Never hogged by bots.

Site that allows minimally authenticated posting of aircraft ACARS messages? Never seen it hijacked for ads.

Physics-limited space for nearly untracable HF radio transmissions that can span half the US? Handfull of trolls that voluntarily relegate themselves to the 'troll freqs'.

It's no surprise the site allows unauthenticated JSON; in the rest of the hobby the FCC makes most types of security outright illegal.

For a long while I’ve had the plan to spam the hell out of the ingestion points for nonconsensual spyware/telemetry in open source projects, rendering the collected data useless. Been too busy to write the code the last few years.

aaaand it's dead

>Is that because the tech is 50 years old from before QWERTY was the standard?

QWERTY predates electronic devices.

You don't really need to type long form text on it. The primary use of the keyboard on the MCDU is for the flight management computer, and aviation fix names are 3 or 5 letters at most. That is the primary design case for the keyboard. ACARS is secondary, and on a typical flight only a few long-form text messages are sent.

Every aircraft that I've ever flown has an alphabetical keyboard. Typically horizontal space is valuable, yet vertical space is less valuable, so it's easy to make the keyboard long but not wide. However, as others pointed out, it seems to be changing in newer jets.

I think it’s long past time to reorder the alphabet to follow QWERTY order. It will make keyboarding much easier for children. We just need to write a new alphabet song.

> That must be a pain in the ass to type in.

Only until you're used to it. Then it's just as natural as switching between a keypad with a 1 in the top left versus one with a 7 in the top left. Your brain just takes the wheel.

My guess would be: QWERTZ touch typing was not a common skill in most pilots at the time these were introduced, and an ABC layout is slightly more ergonomical than QWERTZ for users not familiar with either.

Now that's changed, but changing the keyboard now would ruin older pilots' muscle memory.

Oooohhh!!! Back in the day I had an "opportunity" to implement a virtual CDU interface, even re-created that font to do it. It talked to a real FMC (and later anything on the ARINC 629 bus). Good times :)

> That must be a pain in the ass to type in.

You get used to it, same as you got used to a QWERTY keyboard.

(note: this based on my experience often interacting with another device with an alphabetic keyboard, not an FMC)

Even if you did QWERTY, how would you arrange it in a 5x6 matrix?

There are ACARS devices with qwerty. Like https://www.aeroexpo.online/prod/spectralux-corporation/prod...

Changing anything significant on an aircraft requires certification though. So you typically have to have a very good cause to do it.

A lot of fighters have it even worse. Buttons around an MPD, or a T9-like system where number keys are overloaded for ~3 values each.

I believe the A350 has it in qwerty.

QWERTY isn't universally used internationally, whereas the alphabet order is.

(and if you set it up on a raspberry pi and run it full time you can get a free business plan subscription to flightradar24)

https://www.flightradar24.com/add-coverage

Yep, me too.

Exactly.

I think you are overthinking a fun little project with a memeish name. This stuff is just super fascinating and entertaining to aviation nerds. And using “drama” in the name is just typical hyperbole and almost like gen z / internet slang that you find online.

Comments riffing on the LEO request for PAX TOUCHING PAX is just typical forum stuff. Not something that I condone and somewhat unsavory, but it’s the internet and people riff on much more horrible stuff online. Doesn’t mean it’s okay but just not a specific flaw of this project, imo…

I'm with you on this. I had to look up what ACARS is, but I've been following the ATC YouTube channels that try to make infotainment and I don't like it. I get that the public has an interest in what's going on, but I dislike that there are teams of people sitting around with monitoring software for the express purpose of finding mistakes and faults in people. It just seems wrong. And my guess is in the next few years, we will see pilots unions ask for encrypted channels because they will argue that stress of a national audience will affect their decision making.

Explicitly legal. ECPA has an carve out for listening to aeronautical radio traffic:

18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(g)(ii)(I/IV):

"It shall not be unlawful under this chapter or chapter 121 of this title for any person to intercept any radio communication which is transmitted by any station for the use of the general public, or that relates to ships, aircraft, vehicles, or persons in distress;... or by any marine or aeronautical communications system."

It's broadcast in the clear, unencrypted. Just like all non-military aircraft comms.

The ones recorded in the US probably are legal to listen to and the ones in the UK probably are not. I think I remember reading somewhere that it’s not legal to record ATC in the UK. IANAL SIUKRTCL

PT REPORTS CHEST PAIN RM318

that's nothing https://au.news.yahoo.com/woman-caught-breastfeeding-cat-pla...

Yep someone's going to be getting a little chat with the cops for getting handsy. And at 7am for goodness sakes!

Yup. See also:

NO VITALS. NO MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS ON BOARD

https://infosec.exchange/@acarsdrama/114200787168449171

FOB is Fuel On Board. Nothing interesting.

Why does it need to? What value does that add?