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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

So how do I actually see which airplanes are in the sky at a given moment? I went here:

https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/vegasbrianc

(from TFA) but it's all just stats. I want to see "Ok, that's an NBC helicopter overhead" or "Oh, that's a flight to Denver overhead")

Or is that only available if you have access to the pi itself?

View on HN

Check the Flightradar24 app (https://www.flightradar24.com), I use it all the time to determine the helicopter or airplane nearby.

Wow this is great. Do military aircraft show up? Sometimes I hear them roaring overhead and want to know what kind it is.

If you want to see military aircraft use ADS-B exchange: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/ there is a filter (click the U button on the map) that will only show military aircraft. The commercial ADS-B tracking sites filter out these and many other aircraft. Enjoy.

If you are running your own receiver, you should see them on your map, especially if you are part of a MLAT network for calculating position data for aircraft that only transmit Mode-S data.

The key issue is ICAO hex to aircraft mappings, and there you'll need to either do a lookup against (often commercial APIs) or build your own registration database from public data.

Doesn't the main view show that? https://flightaware.com/live/

Correct, you need access to the Pi itself. However, you can use the FlightAware map to zoom in on Denver

Besides the other sites already mentioned, there’s also radarbox.com

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