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Comment by neartheplain | Hacker News Reader

Reminder that with a ~$25 software-defined radio (SDR) dongle you can receive any aircraft’s ADS-B signal, complete with position, altitude, velocity, and flight ID:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Dependent_Surveillan...

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/adsb-aircraft-radar-with-rtl-sdr/

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I contribute ADS-B data grabbed with SDR to Flightradar24. It's pretty sweet because they give you their Business subscription plan (the highest one, $50/month) for free.

I think you may need at least a free account to see the stats, but in any case these are my two sites:

https://www.flightradar24.com/account/feed-stats/?id=5024

https://www.flightradar24.com/account/feed-stats/?id=23968

You can also use the same hardware to feed to Flightaware simultaneously and they’ll give you a free enterprise account.

Thanks for the tip, that actually never occurred to me. (No really, I'm not being sarcastic.)

I'll definitely set that up.

There were issues a while ago relating to the MLAT setting, but I set it up a month or so ago on the pi-aware distro feeding to FA first, and then just ran the FR setup utility after that with no issues.

Obviously I’ve no real need for either of them, but its nice to have for something I was going to run anyway!

Why not https://www.adsbexchange.com ? FR24 filters out military planes.

Just want to second adsb exchange. I was using fr24 for a while and I think someone on here suggested adsb-e and it's a godsend. Living in the DC area, I see lots of fuckery where military helicopters that don't even show up on fr24 at least leave these weird artifacts on adsb-e.

Note I live on the flightpath between the WH and Camp David, and the Marines practice this run A LOT. I only found this out once I started WFH every day due to the pandemic.

Sometimes it's a lone helicopter, sometimes they are in a trio. But FR never shows anything and ADSB-E at least shows an artifact that essentially appears as a drone with no tail number.

I think the correct question would be: why not both.

Since if I had to make a choice, I would single out Flightradar24 too, since the (iPhone) app is just great.

Just to show I wasn't making empty promises, I am now also feeding ADS-B Exchange:

https://www.adsbexchange.com/api/feeders/?feed=ndZezh8wKD8NV...

Would you mind giving an overview of the hardware you use? Thanks.

Not at all. At home I have a cheapo Adafruit RTL-SDR ($22 at Microcenter https://www.microcenter.com/product/463176/adafruit-industri...) running on an unused Gigabyte Brix. At my parents' I have a similar SDR on a Raspberry Pi. They're both indoors on the highest floor.

I have a LimeSDR as well that I screw around with sometimes, but really any basic receiver will get the job done.

I'm planning on checking out adsbexchange and FlightAware based on the comments.

The setup on the Brix: https://photos.app.goo.gl/dJmvM3R9u3eGpggP8

Project Loon balloons on Flightradar24: https://photos.app.goo.gl/b8wDkTn6XaRmUWGw6

Thank you so much!

I see on the Brix you're just using the stock antenna, which is encouraging given I have perennial issues with reception on other devices.

Now to buy some gear...

And even without an SDR radio, you can head over to https://adsbexchange.com and explore aircraft live in your area!

Do any informed US readers here know what are the implications of the FAA ADS-B privacy ICAO address program[0]? Will this reduce the possibility for hobbyists to have oversight over such flight operations?

[0] https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/equipadsb/privacy/

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