posted on Mar, 30 2012 @ 12:29 AM
reply to post by muzzleflash
With a mode-s receiver, you could track the location, altitude, velocity and perhaps squawk code of the Ikhana UAV.
Once you know the location of the plane, given the FAA sector map such as found on skyvector dot com, you could determine the likely air traffic
control frequency the "pilot" will be using and monitor it.
Monitoring video is potentially possibly, depending on what mood NASA is in. Within 70 nautical miles, the communication is line of sight to the
ground station. That would be C-band. Not mentioned in Peter's book, but most likely in the range of 4.5GHz to 4.8GHz. There are only so many places
they can hide given the band plan. When outside of line of sight, the video (technically video, telem,, whatever) would be on KU band. I would bet
they just buy time on a commercial satellite, much like SNG (Satellite News Gathering). Either C-band or KU could be in the clear or encrypted.