Station: DOT-VHF Ground Station Location: Anchorage, Alaska Organization: Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities Date: 2026-03-12
SkyBridge Alaska is an open-source aviation safety system that provides critical flight information (weather, NOTAMs, VHF radio transcripts) to general aviation pilots via a low-cost LoRa mesh network. The DOT-VHF station is a deployed ground station prototype built on a Raspberry Pi 5 with three software-defined radios, monitoring VHF aviation voice (118-137 MHz), ADS-B aircraft transponders (1090 MHz), and UAT traffic/weather (978 MHz).
The station captures VHF pilot communications, transcribes them using AI (OpenAI Whisper), and is designed to relay critical information over Meshtastic mesh radios — enabling pilots in remote Alaska to receive real-time aviation data without cell or satellite coverage.
| # | Document | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Hardware Inventory | All physical components, serial numbers, costs |
| 02 | Software Inventory | All installed software, services, versions, Python packages |
| 03 | System Architecture | Data flow diagrams, service dependencies, storage layout |
| 04 | Configuration Reference | Every config file, parameter, port, and tuning value |
| 05 | Operational Runbook | How to access, monitor, troubleshoot, and maintain the station |
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| SSH | ssh blastly@192.168.1.81 (key-only) |
| SDR Spectrum | http://192.168.1.81:8073 |
| Aircraft Map | http://192.168.1.81:8504 |
| Status Dashboard | http://192.168.1.81:8080 |
| VHF Audio Archive | /mnt/nvme/skybridge/vhf-audio/ |
| Transcripts | /mnt/nvme/skybridge/transcripts/ |
| ADS-B History | /mnt/nvme/skybridge/adsb/ |
| Pipeline Code | ~/scripts/vhf-pipeline.py |
| GitHub | https://github.com/SFETTAK/Skybridge-Alaska |