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Comment by dgacmu | Hacker News Reader

Some are likely to, but remember that feeding is a mutual exchange - sites that you feed to generally give you a free, no ads account. I feed both ADS-B exchange and flightaware for this reason. Although I will admit that the flight aware app is more useful unless you're interested in unfiltered data. Contributing to an unfiltered source is one motivation, but it's one of several.

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ADS-B Exchange used to have another incentive to feed in the form of free API access, subject to certain limits and for noncommercial use only. They stopped that a year or two ago, I believe because various commercial operations kept abusing it.

Not true -- I currently access the API to obtain an aggregated feed in exchange for my feeding ADSB-X with my receivers (1090 and 978 MHz). You have to ask for access and it's poorly documented but it works and feeds my own local tracking site running 24.7.

They specifically removed the text on the website saying you can get API access from feeding, replaced this with a link to their paid RapidAPI (under "Enthusiast Usage Terms") and no longer automatically give you API access with an active feeder key. That seems like a pretty clear message even if they made an exception for you. Besides, how long do you think your free access will last under the new ownership?

EDIT: In their FAQ it currently states: "In very limited situations ADSBexchange.com may choose to allow non-profit, research, or educational entities access to the historical data or API at reduced fee, in these situations such entities must meet all other requirements including hosting a feeder. ADSBexchange.com API pricing is a fraction of the cost of ADS-B data available anywhere else." To me that is quite different than their previous policy of providing automatic noncommercial API access to anyone hosting a feeder. It removes an incentive to feed and discourages use of the API.

This is my situation as well. If you travel a lot, having something light Flightaware giving you more detailed information about what is really happening with your flight or airport is wonderful and starting a feed was a fun way to get more features.

I have a basic (free) Flightaware account. I can't imagine anything relevant to commercial airliner travel that I'd need that I don't get from that free account. Is there something I'm missing?

(I totally get the fun aspect and it's fairly cheap to put a receiver up.)

the only value for me is having no ads. which is, in fact, something i value, but not at the $80/month it would take to subscribe for. But it's worth sending my feed.

From FR24, you get two years of historical data for starters.

Lots of interesting stuff outside of commercial airliners.

Flightaware (and FR24) censors (for a fee).

I remember emailing a journo covering a protest to look up and observe the plane circling around.

But ultimately they’re different services: Adsb is vessel focussed, while FA/FR24 are flight# focussed.

Want to find out what routes your aircraft typically flies? Adsb will be the place to check.

Want to see if your flight is typically on-time? FA/FR24.

> Flightaware (and FR24) censors (for a fee).

Are there any services you're aware of that don't censor?

ADSBExchange ... that is why I contributed.

Need a list of all private jet tail numbers from DAVOS/WEF and have a tracking system for those... like the Elon tracker

That's part of why an unfiltered ADS-B exchange is valuable. You can track senior executives and try to get ahead of the news. Flying in to Davos is pretty uninteresting compared with travel to factories, competitors' offices, mining operations, international travel, etc. It gives you an idea what executives are thinking about doing.

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