Latest News - In Case You Missed the Newsletter

[Anmer]

13 November 2009 Newsletter

Just a couple of news items.

There's a new download in the User Guide section - My SBS-1 Setup.  Written by Anmer, it's a personal description of his SBS-1 and Basestation setup, which may be of interest.  It should come with a health warning though - you'll never see the wife and kids again!

The Christmas Competition will start on 1st December and run throughout the month.  We have some great prizes and will provide more details and a sampler around the 21st/22nd November.  It will be good fun even if you don't win a prize. And we'll be handing over all December's donations to the member's preferred charity so please let us have your nominations if you haven't already done so.

Talking of competitions, don't forget Will Smith's screenshot one for November.

We've also made a subtle change to the Personal Message Inbox and Outbox.  There is a new column on the left displaying an envelope.  This will indicate if your sent message has been opened by the recipient and if you've read or replied to a received message.  Interesting to see how many messages haven't been opened!

Last but not least, do let us know what ModeS receiver you're using and put yourself on the member map.

[Anmer]

23 November 2009 Email

As a prelude to the Christmas Quiz starting on 1st December, Anmer has offered to donate ?1 to the Radarspotters Charity for every correct answer (one entry per member with at least one forum post) for the two sample logos in the Competition announcement.

PM Anmer with your answers, closing date 23.59 GMT/Zulu 30th November 2009.

As well as testing your logo skills, it helps swell next month's Charity Donations.

Regards,
The Radarspotters Team.

[Anmer]

27 November 2009 Email

There's a new Guide in the Downloads - Networking the SBS-1.

As well as covering the ethernet options - home made, Ethernet Module and SBS-1e/eR - there's also a section on setting up a private MapModeS network.

And can I ask all our new members to visit Which System do You Use and put yourself on the Member's Map.

And don't forget the Christmas Quiz.  Doors open 1st December 2009.

Regards,
The Radarspotters Team.

[Anmer]

1st December 2009 Newsletter

November was a record month with 197 new members and over 301,000 page views, up 40% up on last month..  Thank you all for continuing to support Radarspotters.

Donations last month were ?100 and after deducting monthly running costs, our prize kitty now stands at ?202.48  Some of this will fund the Christmas Quiz prize of the Uniden USC230 close-call scanner.

Our Advent Calendar doors start opening from today so do check out the link from the Competition page.

The competition is free to enter and we will contribute all December donations to Help for Heroes, the charity nominated by you, our members.

If you enter the competition, you might like to make a small charity donation.  There?s no obligation but all the donations will be going to a worthy cause.

There's a new User Guide in the Downloads, Networking the SBS-1 as well as updated Zip files with IanK's excellent silhouettes, for both the SBS-1 and AirNav RadarBox.

Finally, don't forget we offer a personal, remote support service for all members.  This can cover a wide range of issues and more details can be found on the Forum.

Regards,
The Radarspotters Team.

[Anmer]

Christmas Eve 2009 Newsletter

A very Happy Christmas and New Year from all the Moderators at Radarspotters.  Thank you for your support and postings since the forum was launched in March and your generous donations, especially this month for our Help for Heroes appeal.

All the Advent Calendar doors are now open with all 50 logos for the Christmas Quiz.

Some logos are easy but are a challenge!  But don't despair, as the most correct answers received can win.  You don't have to know them all!

So when you've had enough of leftover turkey and need to get away from the in-laws, why not spend some quality time trawling the net or thumbing through those old aircraft books?  Every logo in our advent calendar can be found on the internet, somewhere.

Have a great holiday.

Regards,
The Radarspotters Team.

[Anmer]

1st April 2010 Newsletter

It's been a couple of months since our last Newsletter so here are a few items worth a mention.
 
Radarspotters was one year old in March which also saw our busiest ever month with 314,000 page views. In March 2009 we had 118,000. New members are still averaging 100 a month (125 last month) and, unlike some forums, we manually vet and approve every application to block spammers.

The ModeS receiver market is healthy, with good sales from existing suppliers as well as new products. PlaneGadget is now shipping and we await the launch of the Aurora Eurotech. In case you missed it, there's a new four product comparison Check-List in the Downloads.

Radarspotters gets a mention in the April edition of RadioUser where Anmer's SBS-1 setup is described in length. If you can't get a copy of RadioUser, Anmer's original Set-Up is in the Downloads too.
 
For our new members, please remember we offer a personal support service to help you setup your system and a Try Before You Buy option to try an SBS-1 for free. And if you're off abroad on holiday and you need an obscure airfield outline, we run an Outline to Order service (PM Anmer). But if you do take your ModeS receiver abroad, please use it with care.

Finally, a Thank You to those who have made a Donation. Despite allegations to the contrary, Radarspotters is totally independent and we have to cover our monthly running costs from donations and advertising. We receive no financial help from any supplier and our support and moderation services are given freely. But we have to find approximately ?50 for server hosting and without your donations, no matter how small, we would not be able to continue. Thank you.

Oh, in case you didn't notice, there's a Radarspotters Exclusive posted today - the new Basestation 3D. Check it out, looks promising.
 
Happy Easter.

Regards,
The Radarspotters Team.

[Anmer]

03 May 2010 Newsletter

April was another good month for Radarspotters, with 161 new members taking total membership to over 1,300. Monthly page views were just under 300,000 and your donations were £52 after PayPal fees, just covering our monthly running costs. Thanks to all who donate - we need and appreciate your generosity.

You may have noticed we've dropped Google ads. Now that Radarspotters has become the leading independent forum for virtual radar and radar spotting we hope to attract aviation related advertising rather than rely on Google. We can offer competitive rates and a useful media pack for advertisers and we don't allow spammers to inflate our membership.

Radarspotters also has a new Home Page, part of some new developments we have in the pipeline. More of this later.

Although the Aurora receiver has still to be launched, PlaneGadget started shipping during April and initial feedback looks positive. The May edition of RadioUser includes an early review so do get a copy if you're interested in this low-cost ModeS receiver.

PlaneGadget ships with PlanePlotter Lite and the latest version of PlanePlotter (5.4.8.2) includes a new option to output data on port 30003 so that PlaneGadget users can upload data to the likes of Flightradar24.com. PlaneGadget customers will have to upgrade to this version of PP (?25 one off fee) to take advantage of this option and share data with other PP users.

If you haven't done so, do check out the Downloads section where you can find some useful Guides, airfield outlines and Ian Kirby's silhouettes for Basestation.

The new ModeS Receiver & Software Check-List has proved very popular with just under 600 downloads, our fastest download rate ever.

Other top downloads include:

• PlanePlotter Getting Started Guide - 650
• My SBS-1 Setup 589
• Networking the SBS-1 - 500
• PlanePlotter and Google Earth - 188
• A Users Guide to Operator Logos & Silhouettes - 181
• Try an SBS-1 for Free - 172
• A Users Guide to Airport Outlines - 128
• A Users Guide to SBS-1 Populate - 126

We're currently working on a new review of flight tracking websites and hope to publish it later this month.

And if anyone has an idea for a new Radarspotters Guide or Review, please let us know.

Lastly, a housekeeping note.

We get lots of Personal Messages to which we always reply. However, some replies remain unopened so please check your My Messages. Just click on the menu bar. And if you send a PM, there's a little envelope icon in the Outbox and this opens when the message has been read.

Regards,
The Radarspotters Team

[Anmer]

13 May 2010 Email

Following the disruption of last week, we're pleased to confirm that everything is now back to normal. In fact things are even better since we took the opportunity to add some new features and move to a new, faster server.

As explained earlier, our previous server was compromised with a redirect script. There's no evidence of any other infection, of any redirects taking place nor anyone's personal computer being infected. However, it did take us a while to remove all traces of the script and introduce additional security. It was a salutary learning curve and we've gained a lot of knowledge from the disruption. As well as introducing new restore procedures, we've also migrated to a faster server to improve response times and searches.
 
Membership applications now go through an even tighter verification process and, touch wood, Radarspotters is free of the unsolicited spam that plagues other radar forums. We may regret that statement!

Another new feature are flag icons to instantly translate a message into one of ten other languages. We'd welcome feedback from our foreign language members.

Supported languages are:

• Polish
• Spanish
• Italian
• German
• French
• Dutch
• Turkish
• Russian
• Arabic
• and, of course, Portuguese!

On a slightly different matter, one of our members, Jscorpio5 has asked for any South Africa based SBS-1 users to get in touch by Personal Message.

Once again our apologies for the disruption to normal service and we look forward to seeing you back on Radarspotters soon.

Regards,
 
The Radarspotters Team.

[Anmer]

03 June 2010 Newsletter

May was one helluva month for Radarspotters.

As we explained previously, the forum was compromised early in the month with a redirect script. Despite ongoing efforts to remove the offending piece of code, we had no alternative but to take down the site and replace it with a clean build. Unfortunately this took a few days as we also moved the site to a new, faster server at the same time. Everything was back to normal by 13th May and the site has performed very well with excellent response times from the new server.

Despite the outage, we ended the month with an above average of 129 new members and 278,000 page views. Member donations ensured we covered the monthly running cost, so Thanks again to all those who donated.

After a delay of nearly 6 months, the Aurora Eurotech is due to start shipping this week and AirNav's much vaunted "Major Announcement" turned out to be another damp squib.

PlanePlotter released Version 5.4.9.1 towards the end of May with faster updates of live shared data. Please check out the Release Notes as there were quite a few changes in this latest version.

If you've got hold of a PlaneGadget receiver and have any feedback, please post your initial impressions here.

We’ve introduced a new Sell by Auction feature which may help move those pre-loved items.

New Outlines this month are three Austrian airports – LOWL Linz, LOWG Graz and LOWS Salzburg.

There’s also a new Zip file of Ian Kirby’s silhouettes.

Hamish is also offering to customise Flight Simulator panels for FS2004 and FSX.

Last but not least, please delete any unwanted Personal Messages from your Inbox and Outbox.

Once again our sincere apologies for the outage and we very much appreciated the many messages of support we received. Needless to say we’ve completely overhauled our backup and contingency plans!

Regards
The Radarspotters Team