Tuesday, February 10, 2015

How to display correct HFDL ground stations in Sorcerer

I have noticed some people using Sorcerer to decode HFDL shortwave aircraft messages. Unfortunately, Sorcerer is no longer supported and the ground station ID list is hard-coded into the program, and wrong! Annapolis is no longer a ground station and Albrook has been added.

The program does search for an updated list in the registry. Here is how to put the updated list into your registry.

First, open your registry editor. Previous to Windows 8 it  was as simple as hitting the start button and typing "regedit" in the search box, then hit enter, and the registry will open. In Win8 you just type "regedit" on the start screen. You might have to run as administrator.

Now in the registry editor you want to navigate to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sorcery" and here you will find a list of various keys Sorcery needs to decode radio signals.



(A) is the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sorcerer
(B) is the Sorcerer folder (blocked, sorry)

Now right-click on the Sorcerer folder at (B) and then go New>Multi-String Value (C). The editor will wait for you to type in the file name, type "hfdl.txt" (D). Hit enter, now the file is saved.


Now double-click on hfdl.txt (E) and the edit box will open. Here you want to cut-and-paste the current HFDL ground station list (F) exactly as it appears. You need the "UNKNOWN" ones in there. Below is the current list. After you paste this, click "OK" and close the registry editor. You're done! Now you can open Sorcerer and run the HFDL decoder and it will correctly read the ground stations.

Here is the ground station list:

UNKNOWN
SAN FRANCISCO - CALIFORNIA
MOLOKAI - HAWAII
REYKJAVIK - ICELAND
RIVERHEAD - NEW YORK
AUCKLAND - NEW ZEALAND
HAT YAI - THAILAND
SHANNON - IRELAND
JOHANNESBURG - SOUTH AFRICA
BARROW - ALASKA
UNKNOWN
ALBROOK - PANAMA CITY
ANCHORAGE - ALASKA
SANTA CRUZ - BOLIVIA
KRASNOYARSK - RUSSIA
AL MUHARRAQ - BAHRAIN
AGANA - GUAM
CANARIAS - SPAIN


I'm still working on how to correct the ICAO IDs, they are bit-reversed (the six letters are backwards and also bit-backwards (0011 is 1100). I think  need an accompanying program to parse them out and correct them, I'm working on a program to do this as well as plot planes on a map and make it easy to edit a database of planes heard.

Good luck!