Selected artifacts

The archive room.

The archive now combines recovered historical material with one intentionally small modern experiment: a local ADS-B receiver operated by KjM. The historical database remains preserved separately, while the live exhibit shows only aircraft actually heard by that one antenna.

ClientNG map view — evidence that remote aircraft activity was already being presented spatially.

Historic ACARSd map — Historic map asset from the ACARSd source tree.

Flight grid — Flight-grid visualization preserved with the source.

ACARSd server graphic — Original ACARSd server-related artwork.

30 August 2026 • the signal returns

What does KjM see today?

While restoring the old infrastructure, an RTL-SDR receiver was connected to a Raspberry Pi 5 in Balatonszárszó, Hungary. readsb decodes the local 1090 MHz traffic and a tiny ACARSd feeder sends snapshots into the restored database every fifteen minutes.

This is not a global tracking feed. It contains only aircraft received by KjM's own antenna — a small live epilogue to the archive.

Search the current local receiver data →

RTL-SDR / 1090 MHz
        ↓
      readsb
        ↓
 Raspberry Pi 5
        ↓
 ACARSd feeder
        ↓
  restored DB
        ↓
“What does KjM see today?”

Hardware archive • work in progress

The boxes behind the data.

The physical receiver chapter is now being reconstructed as well: scanner/audio hardware, the Kinetic SBS-1, AirNav RadarBox and the inexpensive RTL-SDR that brought the museum back on the air in 2026. Original photographs of the surviving SBS-1 and RadarBox are now preserved here; the hardware archive will continue to grow as more equipment is documented.

Kinetic SBS-1Original Mode-S receiver preserved from the later ACARSd / HomeRadar era.

HARDWARE

AirNav RadarBoxThe original receiver survives and was recovered from storage on 30 August 2026. The antenna is no longer present. Like the SBS-1, this unit was donated by EUclaim.

HARDWARE

Nooelec NESDR Mini / R820TThe inexpensive RTL-SDR used for the 2023 experiment — and plugged back in on 30 August 2026 to prove that ACARSd could listen again.

2026

Raspberry Pi 5Runs readsb and the reboot-safe ACARSd feeder for the current Balatonszárszó station.

LIVE

Original Kinetic SBS-1 receiver with antenna recovered in 2026 — The original **Kinetic SBS-1** with its surviving antenna and cabling. This dedicated Mode-S receiver belongs to the hardware generation that preceded today’s inexpensive SDR receivers. **Donated by EUclaim.**

Front panel of the original Kinetic SBS-1 — Front view of the preserved SBS-1, including the original Kinetic Avionics badge.

Rear connections of the Kinetic SBS-1 — Rear connections of the SBS-1: antenna, Ethernet, USB, power and serial interface — a very different class of receiver from the tiny USB SDR used in 2026.

Original Kinetic SBS-1 power supply — The original Kinetic power supply also survives. Only the detachable mains lead is missing.

Original AirNav RadarBox receiver recovered in 2026 — The original **AirNav RadarBox**, recovered from storage on 30 August 2026. The round RadarBox accessory remains; the original antenna has not survived. **Donated by EUclaim.**

Front panel of the original AirNav RadarBox — Front panel with the wonderfully simple status vocabulary of the period: **Power · USB · Signal**.

Antenna and USB connectors on AirNav RadarBox — The receiver-side antenna connector and USB connection.

Original identification label on AirNav RadarBox — The surviving original AirNav RadarBox identification label — useful evidence that this is the actual period hardware, not a replacement assembled for the museum.

What survives

The recovered material already spans three different types of evidence: executable project source, historical web content and developer documentation.

ACARSd source treeC, Tcl/Tk, Makefiles, clients, web server, public database functions, server discovery and later SBS integration.

SOURCE

libacarsd RCS/CVS repositoryThe decoder library: code tables, CRC, FFT experiments, learning routines and revision metadata.

RCS

Original acarsd.org websiteTemplates, PHP services, API pages, server tools, release notes, webserver pages and historical site structure.

WEB

Original content directoryIncludes the December 2004 “story behind acarsd”, home-page descriptions, libacarsd documentation and release material.

TEXT

libhomeradarA later reusable library for aircraft/flight data processing, databases, Mode-S/SBS handling and network services.

LIBRARY

libacarsd2 CVSReusable second-generation ACARS engine: sound-card decoding, TwoOnOne, contact databases, network server/client and public contribution interfaces.

CVS

mACARSSmall native Windows ACARS decoder built around libacarsd2.dll; its earliest preserved title calls it the “free mini ACARS decoder”.

WINDOWS

winsend2Native Win32/MinGW32 C application for SBS-1/RadarBox contribution that grew into an ACARS/ADS-B workstation and was explicitly updated for the new collector and ATLAS in October 2010.

FEEDER

FlightShare2The later focused native Win32/MinGW32 C contribution tool for FlightGlobal — deliberately simpler than winsend2 and no longer based on Tcl/Tk.

ATLAS

dbadd_lhr.cRecovered real-time ingest bridge from uploaded ACARSd contacts into MySQL and libhomeradar-normalised live data.

INGEST

February 2006

The World ACARS Report

By 2006 the network had grown far beyond a local decoder. The first World ACARS Report preserved a worldwide snapshot assembled by acarsd.org from the distributed data stream.

One day in the worldwide archive: the report for 2 January 2006 lists 16,081 messages and records aircraft, type, airline, flight and — where the translation database could resolve it — route information. Entries included aircraft such as G-BNLL · B744 · BA0143 · LHR–DEL, N809NW · A333 · NW0052 · DTW–FRA and D-ABAS · B738 · AB8265 · MAN–HAM.

Worldwide ACARS log
Location: worldwide

Created by: www.acarsd.org
Free ACARS decoder for Linux and Windows

ACARS LOG 0000 20060102 to 2359 20060102
  Messages:      16081
  Flights:       16081
  Registrations: 16081

G-BNLL   (B744  BA)  BA0143  (LHR-DEL)
D-ABAS   (B738  AB)  AB8265  (MAN-HAM)
N809NW   (A333  NW)  NW0052  (DTW-FRA)

This small extract also shows why the flight-translation work mattered: raw operational identifiers became recognisable flights and routes. The complete historical report remains an archival artifact rather than a live-data service.

Recovered downloads

Forgotten pieces of the ecosystem.

The restored 139 MB website archive preserves original public download packages as well as the pages that described them.

acarsd-live.tar.gzEarly 2003 browser-live experiment: acarsdhttpd, PHP/JavaScript display and FYSB aircraft images.

WEB LIVE

api.zipDeveloper API header defining structured client/server operations, database contribution, route context, access control and compressed/binary transport.

API

JACARS referenceThe download page and server HOWTO document an independent Java client for the ACARSd network.

JAVA

Hidden gamesThe original screenshot page documents three hidden games. Surviving Tcl/Tk source identifies all three as BreakOut, a/c Memory and MovePuzzle — and preserves the hidden ESC acarsd ESC launcher sequence.

EASTER EGG

Open the Platform exhibit →

Original software archive restored

The /download/ directory is alive again.

Selected unnecessary files were removed, but the surviving ACARSd releases, Windows packages, clients, libraries, documentation and legacy version directories have been restored at their original public path.

Browse the software archive

Historical artifacts

Not a supported release channel.

The files are preserved for research, enthusiasts and software archaeology. Modern operating-system compatibility is intentionally not promised unless a specific build has actually been tested.

Original public archive restored

2,096 valid WORLD ACARS reports survived.

The surviving directory contains 4,072 files. The final importer classified 2,096 as structurally valid WORLD ACARS Reports and 1,976 as invalid or non-WAR files. The public browser continues to expose the useful preserved reports under the original /world_ACARS_reports/ path.

Browse the WORLD reports

Reconstructed historical database

114,328,158 message rows.

The binary rescue recovered 1.73 million client uploads containing 72.79 million ACARS records. The completed WORLD-report import then restored additional non-duplicate historical material and source provenance. A direct count on 30 August 2026 verified 114,328,158 rows in the searchable messages table.