Skybridge-Alaska

Hardware Inventory — DOT-VHF Ground Station

Project: SkyBridge Alaska Station ID: DOT-VHF Location: Anchorage, Alaska (61.2181N, -149.9003W, 40m ASL) Inventory Date: 2026-03-12


1. Compute

Item Specification Qty Est. Cost
Raspberry Pi 5 16 GB RAM, BCM2712 (Cortex-A76), aarch64 1 $80
MicroSD Card 64 GB (57 GB usable), boot drive 1 $12
Crucial P3 Plus NVMe SSD CT2000P3PSSD8, 2 TB, PCIe Gen4, mounted via Pi 5 HAT/adapter 1 $120
Hailo-8 AI HAT+ Present but disabled (NVMe occupies M.2 slot priority) 1 $70
Power Supply Official Pi 5 USB-C 27W (5.1V/5A) 1 $12
Case/Enclosure Pi 5 case with active cooling fan 1 $10

2. Software-Defined Radio (SDR)

Item Serial/ID Frequency Role Qty Est. Cost
RTL-SDR Blog V4 BLOGV4 118-137 MHz (VHF Aviation) OpenWebRX + VHF pipeline 1 $35
RTL-SDR (FlyCatcher) ADSB1090 1090 MHz ADS-B Extended Squitter (readsb) 1 $30
RTL-SDR (FlyCatcher) UAT978 978 MHz UAT / FIS-B (dump978-fa) 1 $30

3. Antennas

Item Band Connected To Qty Est. Cost
VHF Aviation Antenna 118-137 MHz BLOGV4 1 $25
1090 MHz ADS-B Antenna 1090 MHz ADSB1090 (FlyCatcher) 1 $20
978 MHz UAT Antenna 978 MHz UAT978 (FlyCatcher) 1 $20

4. Networking

Item Specification Qty Est. Cost
Ethernet Cable Cat5e/Cat6, connects to local network 1 $5
WiFi Built-in Pi 5 802.11ac, connected to local AP

5. Meshtastic (Planned)

Item Specification Qty Est. Cost
Meshtastic LoRa Radio 902-928 MHz ISM, USB or serial connection 1 $35-50
LoRa Antenna 915 MHz, SMA connector 1 $15

Status: Not yet connected to this station. VHF pipeline is ready to publish transcripts once hardware arrives.


Cost Summary

Category Subtotal
Compute (Pi 5 + storage + PSU) ~$304
SDR Receivers (3x) ~$95
Antennas (3x) ~$65
Networking ~$5
Meshtastic (planned) ~$50-65
Total (deployed) ~$469
Total (with Meshtastic) ~$519-534

USB Device Map

Bus 001 Device 002: RTL2838 — BLOGV4 (VHF)
Bus 003 Device 003: RTL2838 — ADSB1090 (1090 MHz)
Bus 003 Device 004: RTL2838 — UAT978 (978 MHz)

USB serial numbers are programmed into each dongle for persistent device identification across reboots.

NVMe Drive Health (as of 2026-03-12)

Metric Value
Model Crucial CT2000P3PSSD8
Capacity 1.8 TB usable
SMART Status PASSED
Temperature 30C
Available Spare 100%
Percentage Used 0%
Power-On Hours 664
Media Errors 0
Data Written ~20 MB (station recently deployed)