[b_emery]

I'm actually serving data to marinetraffic.com from a receiver near Point Conception, California. The AIS broadcasts in the VHF band so it's basically line of site, plus a bit more because of various scattering effects. We have a receiver on Santa Cruz Island at about 750 ft elevation that gets AIS signals from ships off Mexico (when the conditions are right) - way beyond the quoted range.

The amount of shipping along even our small section of coast boggles the mind. There's a seasonal signal to it also. See [1] for example.

[1] http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2011/10/la-port-traffic-in...

[toomuchtodo]

This makes me want to buy a bunch of AIS receivers and take a week or two off to travel to far flung locations to setup remote receiving locations.

Nerd level: Extreme

Bonus points that you cite Calculated Risk blog.

[b_emery]

This makes me want to buy a bunch of AIS receivers and take a week or two off to travel to far flung locations to setup remote receiving locations.

We've been putting them at our HF radar sites to log ship data, so that we can use the ship data in a hack to get the radars to self calibrate. The radars measure ocean currents and are in some pretty 'far flung locations'. Yes it's fun!

[hef19898]

Besides the fun this is, setting up the recievers I mean, great hack with the self-calibrating radars, elegant and effetive, respect! Maybe one should integrate ship data to freight tracking services, so you can actually locate your container, well more the vessel!

[b_emery]

Thanks! I believe that there are some companies that do just that (the container tracking bit that is).

[toomuchtodo]

Volunteer positions? =)