Some of you may have seen these before or like me it may be new to you. Flightaware sells parts that you can use to make your own airplane location tracker for the planes in your area. It uses ADS-B
(Automatic dependent surveillance–broadcast) to pinpoint the planes' location. I currently have mine set up in my shed at my house using a raspberry pi and a homemade antenna. But cheap commercial antennas are available as well.

More info: https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/

When you set up a flightaware account it automatically feeds the info to their website and you get a free premium account and access to statistics and a live flight view shown below.




It's really a lot of fun and I'm hoping to see even more once air traffic pics back up and I install a better antenna. Although even with the one I have now I've tracked plans further than 150miles away.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ryan81986,

I have ADS-B in my plane, check my flights at times, no more anonymous flying, normally.

I don’t spend much time snooping on flight aware, lots of info if someone has a reason to look.

I've considered putting one together - would like to also put the 978 Mhz processes in for GA aircraft.

Line of sight is paramount - the higher your antenna, the better the coverage. In addition, an antenna that is more sensitive will receive more.

This one is listed at 9bB. It will cost more - if you don't need as much sensitivity, the second link should suffice:

https://dpdproductions.com/col...outdoor-base-antenna

https://www.amazon.com/gp/prod...L6WPO?tag=fligh01-20

I actually just ordered the FlightAware version. It should be here at the end of the month. Here is my current setup with my homemade antenna. Works pretty well considering I used the wrong kind of coax, but hey it was an experiment and it was all I had at the moment:

Consider also feeding ADS-B exchange.

https://www.adsbexchange.com/how-to-feed/

It's a completely free service (and I think better) than Flightaware or Flightradar24 where I have an account.

Adsbexchange can also track some military aircraft. Not everything but we can follow the A10s, tankers, and about a dozen other classes of aircraft.

Pretty neat. I'm always fascinated with how many ADS-B receivers pick up my plane as I'm flying around the practice area, doing maneuvers, etc.
Sometimes, they are farther away than you would normally think.

With ADS-B, we're visible over the North Atlantic, something that was never the case before. Moreover, with ADS-B, the controller knows if we've done something in the cockpit that hasn't resulted in an aircraft change yet, simply based on inputs to the flight control panel.

I have never been a fan of flight tracking software and programs, as I think they're security risks, but that horse is long out of the barn.

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
Adsbexchange can also track some military aircraft. Not everything but we can follow the A10s, tankers, and about a dozen other classes of aircraft.

I have that on my desktop to check out along with Flightaware and Flightradar24

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:
With ADS-B, we're visible over the North Atlantic, something that was never the case before. Moreover, with ADS-B, the controller knows if we've done something in the cockpit that hasn't resulted in an aircraft change yet, simply based on inputs to the flight control panel.

I have never been a fan of flight tracking software and programs, as I think they're security risks, but that horse is long out of the barn.

Agreed. About three pages deep in our FMC is a "Print Route Plan" line. When you select it the printer spits out everything that is being sent out by the airplane. It starts with the FMAs and goes down from there. So basically everything you are doing or even thinking about doing (say, having the heading bug 30 deg right to see where that puts you avoiding the CBs) is being sent. I always print that out for guys new on the airplane to show them that Big Brother really is watching.

Edited to add: I only do this near the end of the flight to avoid the ACARS printer barfing something out that looks like a CVS receipt.

It's the damndest thing when ATC is calling with a correction, and the error hasn't been made yet. Someone spins the altitude alerter to the wrong altitude and the controller corrects it with a query because he sees it.

So much for the days of discretion.

On our weirdo cargo wrong-way trips we often get non-standard altitudes. Now it is nice. The Japanese girl last week said anything from 320 to 410. Of course I had to ask her twice because I could not understand her.

We now have an "anomaly" where ATC can send you a new route to your FMC, but if you already have the edit option open (say, requesting winds or who knows what) just opening the ATC message will load a new route into your FMC, which might have been an old one from another flight.

Every advancement comes with a price.

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:.

I have never been a fan of flight tracking software and programs

The ability to track a student's flight is a great aid for instructors.

I can look at a flight record and pick up on the need to do some teaching that is focused on a problem area.

quote:

Originally posted by furlough:
On our weirdo cargo wrong-way trips we often get non-standard altitudes. Now it is nice. The Japanese girl last week said anything from 320 to 410. Of course I had to ask her twice because I could not understand her.

We now have an "anomaly" where ATC can send you a new route to your FMC, but if you already have the edit option open (say, requesting winds or who knows what) just opening the ATC message will load a new route into your FMC, which might have been an old one from another flight.

Every advancement comes with a price.

I haven't come across that one yet. Generally our challenge is getting them to respond through the box. I find I'm doing HF a lot of the time, anyway.

It's so dead out there that they just waived datalink for the NAT tracks on the north atlantic. There's so little traffic that RVSM is open to anyone. My last trip across, I think heard one, maybe two other aircraft during coast-out and coast-in points, and saw nothing enroute, which never happens.

Schiphol was a ghost town.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
The ability to track a student's flight is a great aid for instructors.

I can look at a flight record and pick up on the need to do some teaching that is focused on a problem area.

It's also great from my (student) perspective, in that I can go back and break down the lesson/maneuver that we were doing, and see exactly where things went wrong or right.

There's a conceptually similar system for ships and boats called AIS (Automatic Identification System), which uses a digital signal that piggybacks on a marine VHF radio channel. It transmits information like ship/boat name, length, position, heading, speed, etc. Vessels over a certain size are required by law to have AIS transceivers, and anyone who wants to can install a transceiver on a boat of any size (I have an AIS transceiver on my 22' fishing boat, although I've never gotten around to registering it, so it doesn't transmit).

It's pretty easy to set up a receiver for because a number of inexpensive marine VHF radios have AIS receivers built in and you can use an inexpensive marine VHF antenna.

There are also websites that aggregate AIS data from all over the world - basically, Flightaware for boats. A popular one is VesselFinder.com.