I have been playing around with receiving AIS (Automatic Identification
System) signals. AIS is used on ships, it is used to send information about
your position, etc via VHF to the surrounding ships. But know this started
to get a bit boring. So know I wan to try to se if it is possibly to receive
the VMS signals from Inmarsat-C. The VMS system is manly used on fishing
vessels. On the ship there is a box with a gps and satellite tranciver. The
position information is send each hour, to a land earth station, were it is
distributed to the different authorities.



The first thing is to receive the signals. But also to decrypt the data can
be complicated.

Any help or advices are welcome. Also if you have some good links to people
ho have been dealing with projects like this, could be useful.



Cheers Michael