No planes? Let me check on something.
Has anyone else noted (lately) that there are fewer planes overhead? If it was just me, I could say that my lessened observation time (looking up instead of ahead of me) could be a reason, but I have something more scientific on my side: a tiny radio received that “watches” for commercial aircraft and sends the salient details to somewhere else. Rather, I HAD a tiny radio, until it stopped working a couple of days back.
Actually, about the same time that my “radar” went out, I received an email to notify me of the failure. Automation, etc. And sure enough, when I checked the web monitor, there were error codes.
I don’t have the resources to check on such things, but I sent off a polite email to the associated help desk, and within hours I had a reply. There was a problem, and they would appreciate if I could get involved at a nuts and bolts level.
Specifically, the message went:
“It may help to move the Radio to another USB port.
Please power down the unit and remove the antenna and all connections. Remove the nut ring where the antenna attaches and then remove the screws to the cover on the back. Once you get the cover off find the radio which is the part that the antenna attaches to and has a black USB cable running from it to the Raspberry Pi. Remove the screw that is holding the radio and unplug the black cable completely from the device and put aside. Plug the radio directly into the RPi in one of the USB ports. You can try another port in case that port was bad to begin with.
Now reattach the antenna to the radio and all other connections and boot up.”
Clear, concise, requiring only a screwdriver. This I can handle. And so I did. And on the first reboot, things returned to normal. I like that part.
