Drones to fly over parts of Onondaga, Madison and Oswego counties(syracuse.com)

Drones to fly over parts of Onondaga, Madison and Oswego counties

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/08/coming_soon_to_cny_sky_miles_above_you_military_training_drones.html

1 comments

"The remotely operated MQ-9 Reapers have already been flying over a large swath of northern New York since October 2011. The Federal Aviation Administration has recently expanded that air space further south to include some of Central New York's most densely populated regions."

Is there anyone from this area around? Thanks to Parastoo[1] and Kingcope[2] I have gained some interest in how drones communicate(C/Ku Band) and who they operate with (SAIC[3]).

For those interested in partially decoding drone communications, particularly around where they are known to be operated in the US, it may be worthwhile to look into a setup like this[4]. It is a cheap $20usd-ish rtl-sdr tuner paired with a still cheaper 'Avenger' PLL LNB, allowing the operator to tune the cheap usb dongle into Ku band, which drones use out non-line of sight communications.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6038657

[2] http://privat.bahnhof.se/wb907234/pics/skygrab.pdf

[3] http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/06/14/news-saic-wins-95-mil...

[4] 'Crossband QSO, receiving EB5EA at 10GHz and transmitting EA5KGD on 432MHz. With SDR RTL2832U E4000 ("ezcap" stick) and PLL LNB ("Avenger" PLL321S-2), Digital KU Band Single LNBF' http://youtu.be/Sdmo-FtHtGU