Airnav ACARS Decoding Software

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Although it pains me to state this, but my preference for decoding lies with the Airnav ACARS Decoder v1.1.  The reason I say this is that Airnavs other products are very buggy and poorly supported.  However their decoding algorithm for this particular piece of software is very sensitive and tolerant of errors.  The displays available to the enthusiast are pretty much spot on and one can change from a text log type of view to a flight list display showing all the aircraft intercepted for most of the previous few hours (although that all depends on how busy your location is).

Another rather large reason is that for a few years I was very happy with the SkySpy decoder which used a serial interface.  Once again I found that this was very sensitive and rarely missed a decode.  However, the subsequent Microsoft operating systems NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP have not been able to provide the same level of support required for the serial interface and the use of  soundcard has become mandatory in these OS's.  I would dearly love to see some development of the SkySpy software to support serial-to-USB conversion or the provision of a new USB interface.  I could be pushing it uphill for this though! 

The biggest shortfall of Airnav ACARS Decoder v1.1 is the editing of the database.  I am a fervant believer of reading text in a typically English fashion, for example the route NZAA-NZCH is OK but I much prefer to read Auckland-Christchurch.  Airnav built into their database an easy option of displaying the route by defaulting to IATA codes and all in uppercase.  By opening up the D002.dat (Routes Data) in a simple text editor it is now possible to quickly add or amend the route data and to enter your reading preference thus:

"CALLSIGN","ROUTING",
"ANZ100","Sydney-Auckland",
"ANZ101","Auckland-Sydney",
"ANZ102","Sydney-Auckland",

So you could even replace the hyphen with a "to" to make it more aesthetic.  The drawback is that there is only space in the flight list display for a maximum of 30 characters so long named routes such as Christchurch-Wellington-Auckland gets slightly truncated.