The RF view

The RF view shows what the rig’s radios hear. It has three parts:

• the spectrum and waterfall: the radio band right now and over the last few minutes;
• the radar: ADS-B aircraft around the site, with drone-band and Remote ID panels under it;
• the footer: the ATC bar, the SIGINT events table and the Channel Activity tab.

To open it, click RF in the left sidebar. Its tooltip reads “RF spectrum / waterfall”.

Every operator sees the same RF view. That includes an operator at a forwarder node, which is a remote radio that sends its signals to the rig. The rig does all the processing and sends the results back, so the view is identical in both places.

Layout controls

A row of controls sits at the top of the view. They stay visible even when every panel is hidden.

If you turn both panels off, the view reads “Enable a panel above to display RF data.”

Spectrum and waterfall

The top of the panel is the live spectrum trace. The scrolling waterfall below it shows history: newest at the top, oldest at the bottom. A frequency axis runs under the waterfall.

Header readouts

The header starts with RF SPECTRUM, then shows:

• Source: which radio you are looking at. When more than one radio feeds the spectrum, this is a drop-down list.
• Center frequency and span of the band.
• floor … dBFS: the measured noise floor.
• … signal(s): how many peaks stand out from the noise. It turns amber when there is at least one.
• DEC …/s: shown only on bands that include 1090 MHz. It is the rate of decoded ADS-B messages. Green is normal. An amber ⚠ means there is signal on the band, but no aircraft has decoded for more than a minute. Common causes are older transponders that don’t send ADS-B, garbled replies, or interference.

Display controls

The display range is remembered for each radio source.

Using the mouse

• Scroll over the spectrum or waterfall to zoom in around the cursor.
• Drag to pan.
• Double-click to zoom back out.
• Hover to read the frequency (and the level, on the trace) under the cursor.
• Click to select a frequency.

When you select a frequency:

• Its exact value appears in large digits in the header.
• A level strip appears under the trace. It plots that frequency’s signal level over time.
• You can save the frequency as a bookmark. Type a name in the bookmark name box and click + Bookmark.
• If you click near an existing bookmark, the header offers Remove “…” instead.
• Click × to clear the selection.

The side rail

A narrow rail of sliders runs down the right edge of the spectrum:

Range and Ofs change the same window as the MIN / MAX sliders, just described a different way. Click « to expand the rail into wide horizontal sliders, which are easier on a touch screen. Click » COLLAPSE to shrink it again. On touch devices the rail starts expanded.

The Airband panel

Under the spectrum there may be a collapsible ▸ Airband panel. Your administrator decides whether it appears and what it holds. It can have two parts:

• The airband signal meter: one bar per ATC channel, drawn against the squelch threshold. Collapsed, the panel shows a one-line summary of each channel’s level. A * marks a channel whose squelch is open.
• Airband tuning: channels, squelch, gain and Apply. These are the same controls as on the admin page. See Radios: ADS-B, ATC and datalink.

NO RF SOURCE

If no radio is feeding the spectrum, the panel reads NO RF SOURCE. This is a setup state, not a fault. Ask your administrator. If the radio needs to be set up on the rig, contact DroneTracker support (Admin → Support Access).

The radar

The radar is an offline chart, so it works with no internet connection. It shows:

• ADS-B aircraft around the site, on range rings. The chart picks its own range, and the ring labels show the distance in nautical miles.
• Airports and their frequencies.
• Remote ID drones that report a position, drawn as green diamonds.

Click an aircraft to select it. A detail box follows the selected aircraft. Selecting an aircraft from the events table does the same thing (see Callsign chips).

On narrower screens the radar does not fit beside the waterfall. A Chart button appears at the top right of the spectrum instead. It switches between the spectrum and a full-size chart.

Two panels sit under the radar.

Drone-band RF. This panel reports persistent signals in the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz drone bands that don’t line up with Wi-Fi. Each row shows the band, frequency, strength in dB and how many times it was seen. This is evidence that something is transmitting. It does not identify a drone model. It is strongest when it happens at the same time as a camera track that nothing else explains.

• “bands quiet” is a normal, good state.
• “no wideband SDR” means the rig has no radio that can see those bands. A standard RTL-SDR stops at about 1.7 GHz. To add a wideband radio, contact DroneTracker support.

Remote ID. This panel lists drones that broadcast their own Remote ID. Each row shows the drone’s ID, bearing, signal strength and how it was heard. The header shows the state of the Bluetooth Remote ID receiver, if one is fitted (for example “listening”). With no drones in range it reads “No Remote ID broadcasts in range.”

The footer

On a desktop screen, the RF view replaces the usual detection table with a SIGINT footer. It has three tabs:

• SIGINT Events: the ATC bar and the events table. Buttons above the table choose which radios it lists: All, ATC, ADS-B, Datalink or Remote ID.
• ATC: the ATC bar and only the ATC transmissions, with their transcripts and replay. On a busy rig, ADS-B rows would otherwise push them out of the table.
• Channel Activity: which airband channels have been busy.

Drag the top edge of the footer to make it taller or shorter. Click ▴ at the right of the tab bar to make it tall at once, and ▾ to shrink it again. Your browser remembers the height.

The drone-band and Remote ID panels under the radar resize the same way: drag their top edge, or fold them to one line to give the radar the room.

The ATC bar

The ATC bar sits above the events table. Since version 0.2.552 it holds everything the old right-hand ATC pane held. ATC transmissions are now rows in the events table.

From left to right:

If Listen can’t start, a red message appears next to the button with a why? link. Hover the message to read all of it. Even with no error, Listen can be silent: the radio may be misconfigured or the channel may be quiet. Ask your administrator to check the radio setup.

When no transmissions have arrived yet, the bar reads: “No transmissions yet — use Listen to check audio, then the airband settings or troubleshooting.” Both links open the relevant pages.

Transcription status

The SIGINT events table

The table lists everything the rig’s radios have heard, newest first.

Sources

Emitter IDs are claims, not identity. ADS-B, ACARS and Remote ID are broadcast without authentication. A transmitter can say anything about who it is, and nothing checks it. The column header’s tooltip and the line under the table both say so. Treat a callsign or tail number here as what the aircraft said, not as proof. A camera classification is a different kind of evidence: it is the model’s inference from pixels.

History

The rig keeps every event. When you open the RF view, the table loads the rig’s recent history, so it is not empty after a page reload or in a new tab. Live events then merge in as they arrive. The table shows up to 200 of the most recent rows.

Search and Links

Under the table is a search box: Search history (callsign, tail, text)…

• Type a callsign, tail number or any text, then press Enter. The table then shows matches from the rig’s whole history instead of the live list, with a count such as “12 matches”.
• Clear the box to go back to the live list.
• If the search can’t run, “search failed” appears. Hover it for the reason.

The Links button next to the box answers a different question: what has the rig linked to this identifier? It works when the box holds a callsign, tail number, hex code or drone ID. You can also click any underlined emitter ID in the table.

The card that opens shows:

• when the identifier was first and last heard;
• Also known as: other identifiers for the same thing;
• Links: what it has been seen with, with a confidence level and a count.

If nothing is known yet, the card reads “The rig hasn’t linked this identifier to anything yet.”

Replaying ATC audio

Transcripts of clipped, accented or overlapping radio speech are often wrong. Replay a transmission to hear what was actually said.

Badges and chips in the Detail column

UAP badge. An amber UAP badge marks an ATC transmission that used UAP-related terms. Those transmissions are kept in Recordings. Hover the badge to see which terms matched. See Recording and reporting.

Callsign chips. ATC voice rows end with small chips for the callsigns heard in the transmission:

• Green chip: the callsign matched a live ADS-B track. Click it to select that aircraft on the radar.
• Amber chip ending “· no ADS-B”: the tower named this callsign, but there is no ADS-B track for it.

Marginal datalink decodes. A datalink message that decoded with errors shows dimmed, with an amber … % parity chip in front of it. Some fields in it may be corrupted.

Long details, such as multi-line ACARS reports, are cut to one line. A ⏎ marks each line break. Hover the detail to read the full text.

Channel Activity

The Channel Activity tab shows which airband channels carried traffic over the last 30 minutes. There is one row per channel, and each cell is 10 seconds.

• A lit (green) cell means the squelch opened: the radio passed audio in that slot. Brighter means stronger.
• A dark cell means the channel was quiet.
• The header shows the squelch threshold in use. An empty row can mean a quiet channel, or a squelch set too high.
• The right side of each row reads n active, silent, or not tuned.
• A not tuned row is a channel the radio no longer listens to. Click its × to remove it.

Use this tab to decide which channels are worth listening to.

If the tab reads “No channel activity recorded yet”, the airband radio is not running with ATC channels tuned yet. It fills in over the next few minutes once it is.

Small screens and handhelds

On a phone-sized screen the footer is hidden. To reach the ATC bar and the events table:

1. Tap ATC. On small screens it is in the layout row at the top of the RF view. It also appears at the top right of the spectrum.
2. The ATC bar and the events table open over the view.
3. Tap Close ATC ×, or tap ATC again, to go back.

On the Android handheld, the RF view has no footer at any screen size. The ATC button at the top right of the spectrum is always there, and it opens the same ATC bar and table. See Handheld and game controllers.

In the RF view, a game controller’s D-pad moves between buttons and A presses the highlighted one.