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Been using an USB SDR while flying lately with no issues. Even had a bit of fun a few years ago...here is a snipit of an email I sent to the director of programming & promotions of a radio station in Ft. McMurray Alberta...
"On June 29th I flew from Portland Oregon to Reykjavik (then onto Stockholm) on an Iceland Air flight. On the way out of Portland I got bored and fired up my laptop, USB SDR and placed a VHF 2-way rubber duck antenna between the window shade and the Plexiglas window and dialed around with a program called SDR# (or SDR Sharp). I picked up the usual CBC broadcasts from Regina and the like, but when that one went out I kept looking for more. I found 93.3 and kept listening to it until it was no longer visible on the laptop. The signal seemed to go quite some distance. At the time I was using the airplanes WiFi and texting with a friend my coordinates and had him look up my current location and Ft McMurray. He replied that it was about 325 miles away, which wasn't that bad for being up at 38,000 feet. The signal faded out but I didn't watch it closely to the point that it fell off the screen and location. I planned to do that on the trip home.
On my flight back over the same (reverse) route on the July 12th over Greenland, I fired up the laptop again specifically putting it on 93.3 to see where I could first detect your station. Over the north-western end of Hudson Bay I started to pick up the signal. I then immediately recorded the GPS location with my cell phone and logged it as 65°39'58.50"N 95°53'30.70"W. This puts the first reception of the station at about 1293 km or 803 miles as measured from those coordinates to the middle tower there south of town. I would suspect not skip since we were up at about 38,000 feet. This was one of the reasons I asked for the power output of the station as I expected it to be quite high. I would suspect that a lack of any other terrestrial transmitters where we were significantly helped in reception. Granted, even in wideband mode the audio wasn't that great; I switched to narrowband and could pick up and listen to a caller on the air to the station about a road being closed and the highway department using a remote controlled traffic light that would only allow one lane of traffic to pass at a time due to some very heavy rain caused flooding.
With the continued flight towards Portland the signal of 93.3 got quite strong and from the very moment I could make out words I listened in for any ID and the first was about 15 minutes later when I heard "Ft McMurray" and that set it in stone that I knew I was listening to your station."
The reply was...
"I’m only 2 months late finding this email but I came across it today and WOW! What a great story.. !
Thank you for sharing this story of listening to our station almost 1,300 km away while traveling in the air. I really do appreciate this and I will be sharing it more broadly with our engineering group.
Yours,
John Knox
Director of Programming & Promotions
Country 93.3 & ROCK 97.9
9912 Franklin Ave
Fort McMurray, AB T9H 2K5"
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Using yesterday's technology...tomorrow!
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