help please

[bv68]

Hi everybody just joined and would like some info if possible.I've just bought an airband scanner and wondered if there is any way of getting aircraft registrations from over the airwaves, i hear things like shuttle 6 tango what does that mean? if this is not possible how do people get the registrations of the off airport altitude traffic over my region trent/Ema many thanks.

[RingwaySam]

You can, but you need ACars. You can use ACars without the scanner thoungh - http://www.acarsd.org/ - As for the Shuttle 6 Tango. That's the callsign, but it's a prefix, so the actual flight number would be something like BAW8910. Not all airlines use this method though.

[DAIRD]

..or here:

http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~pdw/alp/

freqencies, updates, infos

[Jet2.com]

What do you mean?
'Getting aircraft registrations from over the airwaves.'
And what's an airband scanner?

[z740]

Scanner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanner_%28radio%29
It lets you listen to ATC so you know what runway is in use, what airline is coming in next, stuff that can be very useful to spotters or when you're taking pictures. Getting registrations over the airwaves means listening to your scanner and figuring out what the reg # of the particular A/C is just by listening to your scanner. It's impossible to get the regs from your scanner though.

-Chris

[Crism]

Is it just me or does receiving and decoding ACARS seem like it takes WAY too much time?

[DAIRD]

Registrations of airliners will not be radioed via airband. But in some (rare) cases ATC's asked pilots for the registration of that particular aircraft and they pilots will tell them.
Pilots of smaller aircraft (as Cessnas, Pipers etc.) without a flightnumber must give the registration to the controllers to identify and talk to them. Inital call from Pilot to the ATC (Airfield, Airport etc.) is to be reported by the complete registration (Delta India November Delta Bravo), next calls only with the national identifier letter and the last letters of the reg ("Delta Delta Bravo") until the aircraft leaves the control zone and enters the new one, so this procedure will start again.
If you use acars with your scanner, you'll get a lot more information than only the registration. Combined with a good map of your area or country, you'll be able tracing the jets and see the actual position. I used it last summer, running the device a week long, so after a while I could even see some ( not all) of the reported aircraft passing by.