I think the principle DOES work (its based on an old technique called a Joule Thief), however there are some prominent technical blogs that have run some of the numbers on their claims like giving you 8x battery life (it gives you more, but not much more, and also increases risk of battery leakage, etc). See Hackaday and Dave at EEV blog.
Making a separate reply, but if you are interested in mapping approach paths, Mode C and Mode S (non-ADS-B) data on the 1090 band may still have interest for you. It will be difficult to correlate, however Mode-S contains the ICAO address and altitude info (even at its most basic without GPS), which you could at least map to Flight IDs and the filed flight plan, giving you a basic approach path in the X and Y direction, which you can add semi accurate (100 or 25 foot resolution) information in the Z direction. Even harder to correlate, Mode C data could be used for non-correlatable, but still trackable info to watch a plane land (gather the data, if a Mode-C target went from in-air (>N feet above airport MSL corrected for pressure altitude) to on-ground (<N feet above airport MSL correct for pressure altitude), you could still get approach information for almost any aircraft, not just ADS-B aircraft. Note: Mode C data has 100 foot resolution, and is pretty noisy.
As someone who used to work with Transponders, I'd be interested in hearing more about what kind of analysis you are doing. Im familiar with using an SDR to receive ADS-B data, but hadn't heard of much analysis beyond graphing of current position, altitude, speed, etc. Unless you are near an airport, chances are most broadcasts that are strong enough for you to receive are going to be from passenger jets with high power Transponders, and unfortunately when planes are at cruising altitude, they tend to follow pretty standard flight plans, barring weather conditions, etc. If you could get a receiver near a small airport in an affluent area (where GA aircraft have been fitted with ADS-B OUT already), then I think you would hear much more interesting things :). Are you listening to the 978 MHz band, or just the 1090 Mhz band?
Very interesting. I guess I had supposed that most pilots on instrument approach would follow the prescribed approach cards, though I guess that Asiana flight really proves that isn't always the case, as well as inclement weather, etc. You mention that most traffic has ADS-B out. Are you listening to non ADS-B Mode S transmissions, or any logging of Mode A/C transmissions? From a single monitoring point, I know that Mode A/C/S transmissions are far less interesting than ADS-B, however I was wonder where your "majority" claim came from. I suppose if you are near a commercial/passenger airport (as opposed to private/GA airport), this will probably be true. I'd be happy to support your efforts if theres anything I can do (I come from an Embedded/Avionics background, including TCAS/Transponder development, as well as some data processing experience), though I can help more with Avionics theory than I can with statistics :). Feel free to send me a PM if you would like to discuss. Best of luck to your efforts, it definitely seems like a cool project!
Started a Spotify Playlist based on some of the submissions I found. Couldnt get to them all, but feel free to make any updates: https://open.spotify.com/user/1213258404/playlist/67NcrUNXOKVwKJ4XU5kgnm
Thanks for sharing. I don't understand any of the sign language itself, but it is interesting how much emotion translates directly from the lyrics into the physical translation. I think a lot of this is the performer herself.