ACARS Drama
88 comments
·March 20, 2025gnfargbl
PatchworkCasino
From my experience the tailwatcher and (not) suprisingly related HAM communities are magical in their ability to just trust their community and rarely get burned.
Only 4 active connections allowed per site on a popular HAM webring? Never hogged by bots.
Site that allows minimally authenticated posting of aircraft ACARS messages? Never seen it hijacked for ads.
Physics-limited space for nearly untracable HF radio transmissions that can span half the US? Handfull of trolls that voluntarily relegate themselves to the 'troll freqs'.
It's no surprise the site allows unauthenticated JSON; in the rest of the hobby the FCC makes most types of security outright illegal.
tjohns
HF is definitely traceable.
Hams make an entire sport of of this ("fox hunting"), and the FCC has a network of automated monitoring stations dotted across the country specifically to determine the location of rogue radio transmissions.
That said, most of the time it's easier to just ignore the radio trolls.
jkingsman
Yeah, but like other things, as long as the trolls stay in their corner, people tend not to bother them because better in a contained spot than anywhere else. Learning 7200kHz (and 14.313) is 4chan radio and to steer clear is a radio rite of passage; I doubt most people would WANT to fox hunt them because then they're gonna leave and potentially settle somewhere more disruptive.
sneak
For a long while I’ve had the plan to spam the hell out of the ingestion points for nonconsensual spyware/telemetry in open source projects, rendering the collected data useless. Been too busy to write the code the last few years.
kylemh
aaaand it's dead
marcellus23
Interesting that the keyboard for these[0] is not a QWERTY keyboard but instead has the buttons arranged alphabetically. That must be a pain in the ass to type in. Is that because the tech is 50 years old from before QWERTY was the standard? Do newer planes have QWERTY?
0: https://acarsdrama.com/fmc.webp
Unrelated, this one is cute: https://infosec.exchange/@acarsdrama/114194436695883209
Suppafly
>Is that because the tech is 50 years old from before QWERTY was the standard?
QWERTY predates electronic devices.
marcellus23
True. Makes the decision even more baffling.
esoterae
Keyboards in aircraft instrumentation certainly do NOT predate electronic devices. Given that one-handed operation for instrumentation is almost always the primary mode of interaction, and instrument panels are really just face-plates on quite deep electronic device containers, the idea of a widescreen panel hole profile just to fit the input keys in a different format/aspect ratio does not make sense.
Some of the most interesting aviation research in the past few decades have been around human factors like psychology, perception, and cognition. If there was some substantial effect to having the buttons be arranged in a different pattern, I do legitimately hope it would have been found by now.
Do keep in mind these devices are cost-prohibitive in the extreme to design, build, and certify. The idea of having separate, parallel processes in order to have a different button layout between regional devices creates a thousand headaches of its own, both before and after production. The issue goes even further, in that just the FAA alone requires simulators of these aircraft to have replicated button look and feel criteria that would make your head spin. Is there even going to be a question as to if you're going to have to have two simulators? Will type-ratings be transferrable? Will there be separate differences training and/or currency requirements between the two distinct input methods?
Some or even most of those answers might turn out favorably for manufacturers or operators or pilots. But just having to ask them drives costs up considerably.
null
buildsjets
QWERTY was invented to make input slower on mechanical devices and prevent the mechanical equivalent of a buffer overflow.
gschizas
That's mostly a myth.
I've seen a YouTube video in the last couple of years that explained the true origins of the QWERTY keyboard. Originally, the keyboard was alphabetical and arranged two rows, based on a piano keyboard, the black keys went A-N left to right, and the white keys went O-Z, right to left. Then it got shortened in width and the letters got folded over (this is why at the right edge of the middle row you have HJKL and the bottom row has MN reversed as NM).
I'm not 100% sure this was the video I saw, but it has some of the points: https://youtu.be/c8f6us-Sjlo
ForTheKidz
> QWERTY was invented to make input slower on mechanical devices and prevent the mechanical equivalent of a buffer overflow.
This is sort of like saying a c compiler is there to stop you from dereferencing null pointers
esoterae
I always thought of it as more of a race condition.
sdh9
You don't really need to type long form text on it. The primary use of the keyboard on the MCDU is for the flight management computer, and aviation fix names are 3 or 5 letters at most. That is the primary design case for the keyboard. ACARS is secondary, and on a typical flight only a few long-form text messages are sent.
Every aircraft that I've ever flown has an alphabetical keyboard. Typically horizontal space is valuable, yet vertical space is less valuable, so it's easy to make the keyboard long but not wide. However, as others pointed out, it seems to be changing in newer jets.
dhosek
I think it’s long past time to reorder the alphabet to follow QWERTY order. It will make keyboarding much easier for children. We just need to write a new alphabet song.
netsharc
Different languages have different keyboards (e.g. QWERTZ or AZERTY). I wonder what problems would happen if we reordered the alphabet...
For one thing the ASCII ordering is now suddenly jumbled up. Maybe our great supreme intellectual leader Elon will issue Magacode to supersede Unicode, kym epcy epc ngy vky yxcohy!
codetrotter
Fun fact about character ordering:
Swedish sorting traditionally and officially treated v and w as equivalent, so that users would not have to guess whether the word, or name, they were seeking was spelled with a v or a w. The two letters were often combined in the collating sequence as if they were all v or all w, until 2006 when the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens ordlista (The Swedish Academy's Orthographic Dictionary) declared a change.
lxgr
Sorting lists alphabetically would produce vastly different results by language, for one thing.
b59831
[dead]
stronglikedan
> That must be a pain in the ass to type in.
Only until you're used to it. Then it's just as natural as switching between a keypad with a 1 in the top left versus one with a 7 in the top left. Your brain just takes the wheel.
bombcar
Many people don’t realize that a phone number pad and a keyboard one are opposite. They just use them.
tyingq
There are ACARS devices with qwerty. Like https://www.aeroexpo.online/prod/spectralux-corporation/prod...
Changing anything significant on an aircraft requires certification though. So you typically have to have a very good cause to do it.
lxgr
My guess would be: QWERTZ touch typing was not a common skill in most pilots at the time these were introduced, and an ABC layout is slightly more ergonomical than QWERTZ for users not familiar with either.
Now that's changed, but changing the keyboard now would ruin older pilots' muscle memory.
sooperserieous
Oooohhh!!! Back in the day I had an "opportunity" to implement a virtual CDU interface, even re-created that font to do it. It talked to a real FMC (and later anything on the ARINC 629 bus). Good times :)
q3k
> That must be a pain in the ass to type in.
You get used to it, same as you got used to a QWERTY keyboard.
(note: this based on my experience often interacting with another device with an alphabetic keyboard, not an FMC)
sooperserieous
You do get used to it, but also the workflow is not entering words as much as it is things like waypoint codes, and a lot of numeric bits, which is why the number pad has its familiar layout.
jparishy
Very cool. I love these feeds.
A very common flow for me when I see something weird on adsb or fr24 is to grab the ICAO address of the plane and search it on https://app.airframes.io/ to see if it was sending out any ACARS messages so I can... see what the drama was ha!
It's a really fun hobby if you find this stuff interesting. You can pick up an SDR online for like $30 USD and be able to do all this without Internet, above your own home.
jcims
(and if you set it up on a raspberry pi and run it full time you can get a free business plan subscription to flightradar24)
MR4D
Did anyone else mistakenly read this as “LCARS” and expect something related to the Star Trek interface?
Clearly I need more coffee.
_-_-__-_-_-
Exactly.
jcims
Message: NO PROBLEM....DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY DELTA PILOTS IT TAKES TO TAXI A PLANE AND NOT RUN INTO ANYTHING...
thot_experiment
I knew watching every mentour pilot and blancolirio video would serve me well. I haven't yet heroically landed a plane after the pilots both had heart attacks, but at least I can read most of these.
billyhoffman
!!!
Message: DISPMORNING. NEED LEO TO MEET THE AC. A PAX WAS INAPPROPRIATELY TOUCHING ANOTHER PAX IN THE ROW INFRONT OF THEM. THE FAS HAVE THE SEAT NUMBER ANDMANIFEST. FYI AND THX
https://infosec.exchange/@acarsdrama/114195325338601167
[edit: Ahh, its a Frontier flight] https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/keyword/N387FR
supernova87a
Is it true, I have heard, that ACARS messages are like as expensive as sending data to Hubble, and airlines hate how expensive it is (hence it is not a viable method of transmitting more volumes of more desired data, like position data, regularly etc.) but have no great alternative that they can develop to replace it?
zX41ZdbW
Also interesting to see, is a map of all ADS-B emergency broadcasts, which can be: ['general', 'nordo', 'downed', 'lifeguard', 'reserved', 'unlawful', 'minfuel']: https://adsb.exposed/?zoom=5&lat=38.3590&lng=-97.5146&query=...
wylie39
What's the legality of this? I was thinking of doing something similar but with POCSAG but from what I can tell it would be illegal because of ECPA(Electronic Communications Privacy Act)
tjohns
Explicitly legal. ECPA has an carve out for listening to aeronautical radio traffic:
18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(g)(ii)(I/IV):
"It shall not be unlawful under this chapter or chapter 121 of this title for any person to intercept any radio communication which is transmitted by any station for the use of the general public, or that relates to ships, aircraft, vehicles, or persons in distress;... or by any marine or aeronautical communications system."
outworlder
It's broadcast in the clear, unencrypted. Just like all non-military aircraft comms.
lxgr
> It's broadcast in the clear, unencrypted.
But so were analog mobile phones and pagers, and in some countries, even receiving unencrypted voice ATC radio isn't legal.
lazide
The whole point of ATC is that everyone in the area is able to figure out what is going on by listening in.
What/how is making listening in on that illegal ok?
jcims
PT REPORTS CHEST PAIN RM318
buildbot
“HI. LAV A FLUSH HAS FAILED. NO SUCTION. CHEERS”
Well, that would be awkward.
mmastrac
Oh Jesus:
HOWDY, WERE GOING TO NEED LEO MEET THE AIRPLANE FOR A PERSON TOUCHING ANOTHER PAX.
wulfstan
Yep someone's going to be getting a little chat with the cops for getting handsy. And at 7am for goodness sakes!
mmastrac
Update:
DISPMORNING. NEED LEO TO MEET THE AC. A PAX WAS INAPPROPRIATELY TOUCHING ANOTHER PAX IN THE ROW INFRONT OF THEM. THE FAS HAVE THE SEAT NUMBER ANDMANIFEST. FYI AND THX
kotaKat
Guess we can move from ACARS to ATC in a little bit...
H8crilA
What about appropriate, consensual touching?
null
Looks like you can "feed the drama" by sending unauthenticated JSON messages to an endpoint that the site specifies?
Fortunately, nobody on the internet has the urge to break things just for the hell of it, so I'm sure everything will be fine.