How Flight Tracking Works: a Global Network of Volunteers

An anonymous reader writes If a website can show the flight path and all those little yellow planes in real time, how can they not know where Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went down? Answering that involves understanding a little about how flight-tracking sites work, where they get their data, and the limitations of existing technologies. It also involves appreciating a relatively new approach that the two large flight-tracking companies, Texas-based FlightAware and Sweden-based Flightradar24 are rushing to expand, a global sensor system known as ADS-B, which broadcasts updates of aircraft GPS data in real time. ADS-B is slowly superseding the ground-based radar systems that have been used for decades, becoming central not only to flight tracking but also to the future of flight safety. And it's powered, in part, by thousands of dedicated aviation hobbyists around the globe.

Comments

I live in the middle of nowhere

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in the middle of nowhere in the USA, and provide ADS-B data. Its fun.

If you lived in a populated area like California or New York, there are already hundreds of people in your area doing this, and so its probably not necessary.

Misleading summary

[swaq]

ADS-B is not powered (in whole or in part) by aviation hobbyists. They are just piggybacking with receivers for flight tracking.

The ADS-B system itself was designed for plane-to-plane communications to improve situational awareness. Ground-based ATC or hobbyists are not required to make the system work.

Source: I worked on an ADS-B product at Garmin.

Re:Misleading summary

[tshawkins]

They are however required to keep the realtime databases that the websites mentioned in the article use. The reciever is basicaly a usb DVB-T terrestial digital tv receiver working as a software defined radio and a bunch of code to pickup the ADS transmissions. The results are streamed to the tracking sites databases.

 

Re:Misleading summary

[tshawkins]

http://flightaware.com/adsb/pi...

Build your own for under $100, raspberry pi, dtv reciever, internet connection.

Re:Misleading summary

[0123456]

I set one of these up a while ago with an old Atom server I had lying around. A couple of hours' work, about $15 for the USB receiver, and the antenna is just taped to my bedroom windowsill. Works OK out to around 100 miles, though reception gets patchy beyond 50.

I'd often wondered where all the vapour trails over our heads were going, and now I know. Of course, I could have saved time and just looked it up on the Internet :).

Re: Misleading summary

[KGIII]

That does help. It gives me some ideas and some potential motivation. The only reason I bought them was to build a cluster and I have absolutely no need for a cluster so I figured I would make one and then make another basement NAS or a media server. I already have a couple of servers down there but no media server. I don't actually have any use for a media server - that is already covered but the goal was to build a cluster, I don't really have a need or a good reason to build one. I figured it would be amusing and that maybe I would get another line put in and maybe make a web facing server. I understand that creating a LAMP stack clustered is really easy but making a clustered LAMP stack RIGHT is actually difficult. I never, I have had them for almost a year and have not done anything with them so I am really liking this plane tracking idea. With all the idiots with small planes in the area, the ones that don't do a flyover before landing their little Cessna or Pipers on water, snow, or a fairly flat field it might get some interesting results. We have those sorts of people crashing all the time. They land parallel to the waves. The hit ridges or small spaces of open water on the ice. Or, often enough they are landing effectively on someone's lawn and they very much misjudge the distance, So it might be interesting.

Works great when you want to be seen

[steve-san]

"ADS-B is slowly superseding the ground-based radar systems that have been used for decades"
... until the aircraft decides to become "uncooperative" and turns the darn thing off -- at which point, this (and any beacon/transponder-based system) becomes instantly useless.
Which is why you'll see ADS-B augment, but never completely replace old fashioned search radar anytime soon.

Cruising Sailors

[anorlunda]

I am a blue water sailor. I, and many others like me, would be happy to carry an ADS-B reciever onboard. That is, provided that it draws very little power, and that it gathers data unattended without my active intervention. Statistically, I think cruising sailors would cover a large fraction of the ocean areas of the globe. I believe the probability of a sailing vessel being within 200 miles of MH370s final flight path would be almost 100%.

The caveat being that I can not transmit the data to the Internet until the next time I reach shore and I can find someone who will let me plug in a USB device. That could mean a delay of months up to a year.

Would non-real time information be valuable? Thinking of the MH370 case, the answer must be yes. Not matter what the delay, the information is still valuable to someone. We could also record AIS signals that many vessels already transmit. I receive AIS from up to 40 miles away.

The idea could be etended to (symbolic) notes-in-a-bottle. A million floating ADS-B recorders would eventually reach shore, and some of them may have their data extracted and transmitted, then thrown back into the sea. Would that be worthwhile? Hard to say.