undefined | Better HN

0 pointsPaulHoule5y ago0 comments

The equipment I have pictured in my mind is one of the two-axis trackers that radio hams use to track satellites with a long but narrow Yagi-Uda antenna. (If that can handle the bandwidth)

These tend to move in jerks and will get in real trouble if you try to move them over the zenith, but they do a great job with LEO satellites and would do OK to uplink one signal to an airplane.

You might be able to hit two receivers if you had a phased array antenna like the Starlink antenna but bigger, but now it isn't a simple hacking project anymore.

BTW, don't try it. There are certain things like aviation and nuclear power that "Posse Comitatus" doesn't apply to and you could find yourself looking down the barrel of an M4 carbine and getting frog-talk from the USMC much quicker than you'd expect.

0 comments

knorker5y ago

The gain of a Yagi (even these ridiculously long ones) I don't think are anywhere near precise enough. Keep in mind that even a 20dB gain antenna (simplified, since radiation patterns are complicated) only focuses the radiation pattern into 3.6 degrees. That's over 7 times the diameter of the moon in the sky.

I think even at GNSS frequencies you may need Arecibo-sized antennas to get useful directivities. E.g. check this diagram: http://www.coseti.org/9006-013.htm

No, I think a phased array is a better bet, but if it's possible to steer that tightly, you'd need a shitload of antennas. Like, a shitload. E.g. US PAVE PAWS active phased array has 2677 antennas to create a 2.2 degree beam. "Only" ~4.5 moons.

I don't know the maths, but that probably means millions or billions of antennas to beamform this right.

So yeah, I'm staying with "not feasible", probably even for a superpower.

londons_explore5y ago

You don't need to make a finely focussed beam... You simply need to be able to put nulls at each of the planes antennas.

If the attacker has two antennas on the ground, say 1km apart, and the plane is 1km up, then no real precision is required - there exists a phase offset between your two antennas where only one of the planes antennas picks up your signal, and the other antenna picks up nothing. If the plane where stationary, this could be found by a simple sweep of possible phase offsets.

If the plane is moving, it becomes harder to find and track the necessary offset, but if the plane is flying half way between the attackers ground based antennas, the offset is ~constant, so a sweep again starts to look doable...

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse