[kochicar]

Originally Posted by govigov

Which airport do you track, i usually do DXB and newyork.

Bonecollector, I will post some pictures of my FR24 receiver and setup once I reach home. Their app is a blast to use. There is a guy in office, who got the flightaware approved so he also feeds data. By the way, I am VOTV2 on the radar.

I was thinking about getting a TECSUN PL660 / PL880 to hear the ATC as none of the india stations are covered on liveatc. Your thoughts on the airband radio?

Seems a lot of trackers now a days in Kerala. Iam F - V O C I 2 on radar and i operate from Kakkanad area in Kochi. I got my free receiver couple of years back and feeding the pool with about 200-250 aircraft data everyday. Till last year, i used to get about 450 flight a day, but due to a new flat in the neighborhood, west side is now partially blocked.

It is very interesting to track A-380 with naked eyes over Kochi everyday, which connect from Dubai to Australia and NZ at ~3 PM IST. Mostly we see 3 of them in queue in a span of 15 minutes.

[sukhoi30]

This is a nice little hobby. I use the unpaid version for tracking flights sometimes especially when one of the family member is travelling around. It is good to keep a track as based on it I can find the exact arrival time and then book a cab for airport pickup.
I didn't realize that we could track flights to such an extent.

[mm403]

@BoneCollector -- great way, patchy coverage in some areas - is that the reason one hardly sees any air activity over China as compared to rest of the world or are you aware of any restrictions.
I have been following FR24, mostly on web, recently observed the 3D view. which IMO is a great feature

[kochicar]

Originally Posted by samaspire

What kind of Internet bandwidth is required for hosting?

With 5 aircraft under tracking at a time in sky, my receiver transmits about ~3kbps of data. Your mileage vary as more aircraft are being tracked. I hope this will give you rough idea of bandwidth requirement.

The real catch is to have low latency from your receiver to flight-radar server. I used to have a high latency link (<240ms) and my radar never used to come on tracker. However i see flight over Kochi being tracked by Bangalore, Calicut, Coimbatore and Trivandrum radars instead of local ones as they have a better link to the tracking server over internet.

Then i switched ISP and latency reduced to less than 200ms (BSNL FTTH) and my radar is competing.

[TKMCE]

Longtime FL24 user here. Love this app but sometimes it does miss flights. Happened with me multiple times at GOI.

Agree with akshay380. Do not depend on FR24 to check airline timings particularly when taking flights. 99.99% it is right, but you don't want to be in the 0.01%.

As far as checking whether your flights are on schedule. best will be to refer the respective airline websites. A few airports (Kochi deserves special mention) has updated information as well

[Jeroen]

Thanks for sharing. When we lived in Delhi I applied as well, but there is plenty of coverage around Delhi of course.

I have been a FR24 avid user for many years.

Originally Posted by Sip

It is important to realise that for a normal person such things are not much useful in any manner and it has potential for use by ANEs especially when terrorism is worldwide threat.

Therefore may i request you to not to share the real time information with anyone.

I would be a little bit more careful of who you call normal. There are literally tens of thousands of people using this service. Some are travellers, others are aviation enthousiasts. A lot are probably a bit of both.

Everybody that travels a lot by plane will be using all sorts of app’s with real time information about your flight, the incoming flight, delays, etc. etc. This app enables you to see see near real time what is happening. When I’m at the airport waiting for my flight I will always track the inbound flights. No matter what the gate agent or the monitor says, this app will give you a very accurate view of whether the inbound plane/flight will be on time, so my flight will te taking off on time.

My wife uses this app to track my flight so she knows what time I might get home.

So yes, there are tens of thousand people using this app more or less daily and I would consider it very normal. The real time information is fed to the FR24 who provide (near) real time flight information to everybody who logs into their website or uses their paid or free services.

https://www.flightradar24.com

There are dozens of apps out there that provide similar services, but FR24 is by far the most elaborate I find.

There are some, in particular in the USA apps that might provide some more specific information. But they are generally local app’s. I you go to the Apple store and search for “flight tracking” you will find some 40-50 different aps doing all very similar things, around the theme of real time flight tracking.

(E.g. https://uk.flightaware.com which is my second favourite after FR24.

FR24 has been known to remove flights from their feeds in case a certain security concerns coming from legitimate sources. However, at the end of the day it is down to individual local legislation whether contributing to or accessing the information is legal.

Jeroen

[smsrini]

This is a very informative thread! 5 Stars...

I was told that there are virtual highways that airplanes use, specially for the cross atlantic crossing between the US and Europe/African continents.

There are supposed to be around 11 highways for cross atlantic flights.

Wondering if you have any screen shots showing those. Are there similar highways between Europe and Asia/Middle East / Africa ? If yes, can someone describe or highlight those ?

I always used to wonder why do flights from say Florida, go all the way up and then turn towards Europe/Middle East...This became clear after seeing the FR24 flight maps.

[SilentEngine]

Never knew one can be host for these services!

Originally Posted by smsrini

I always used to wonder why do flights from say Florida, go all the way up and then turn towards Europe/Middle East...This became clear after seeing the FR24 flight maps.

I think this is more to do with the fact that it's the shortest path to go up and turn, because of earth's curvature. In a flat 2D map, such paths will appear curved and longer.

[slicvic]

Originally Posted by smsrini

I always used to wonder why do flights from say Florida, go all the way up and then turn towards Europe/Middle East...This became clear after seeing the FR24 flight maps.

The great circle route.

Quoting from Wikipedia:
The great-circle or orthodromic distance is the shortest distance between two points on the surface of a sphere, measured along the surface of the sphere (as opposed to a straight line through the sphere's interior).

So, why would the flights cross the Great Atlantic Ocean when they can fly towards north-pole, fly over Greenland, Iceland, Canada and enter USA from North.

Discussed in this post and the thread

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/route-...ml#post3945667

[srinivasnvns]

Originally Posted by govigov

Which airport do you track, i usually do DXB and newyork.

Hi,

I also track DXB, KJFK along with KSFO and KSEA. SFO is fun for one reason. You can listen to NORCAL approach, SFO approach for two parallel runways and SFO departure. The ATC just churns out instructions like a well oiled machine.

Cheers.

[axl7madrose]

I purchased this app in 2015 for $4.99, as the OP says this was just as a hobby and helping friends who are travelling or who wish to know the status when their relatives are travelling, I also purchased the Arrival & Departure board as in-app purchase and works really great. Recently, I informed a friend, who was waiting to receive his in-laws, that their flight was 30 min ahead of schedule by looking at the arrival board of Chicago international airport. Its a very good tool as a hobby. I really don't understand the monthly subscription fee because I did a 1 time payment on an android phone. In app-purchases are for Realistic aircraft icons, Arrival & departure boards, custom alerts

[srinivasnvns]

Originally Posted by smsrini

This is a very informative thread! 5 Stars...

I was told that there are virtual highways that airplanes use, specially for the cross atlantic crossing between the US and Europe/African continents.

There are supposed to be around 11 highways for cross atlantic flights.

It is very easy to see these highways. Go to www.flightradar24.com during early morning IST and you will see trans-Atlantic flights line up towards US east coast. Do the same during night IST and you will trans-Pacific jet streams.

Again, it is super fun to see these birds fly.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by smsrini

I was told that there are virtual highways that airplanes use, specially for the cross atlantic crossing between the US and Europe/African continents.

There are. They are not great circle routes by the way as some other members suggested. A great circle is the shortest distance between two points on a sphere.

Airplanes don’t have the capabilities to fly an exact great circle (unless you go North South or vv). You would have to constantly adjust your course to stay on the great circle.

The system you are referring to is most likely the so called North Atlantic Track system also known as NAT.

From Wikipedia:

North Atlantic Tracks, officially titled the North Atlantic Organised Track System (NAT-OTS), is a structured set of transatlantic flight routes that stretch from the northeast of North America to western Europe across the Atlantic Ocean. They ensure aircraft are separated over the ocean, where there is little radar coverage. These heavily traveled routes are used by aircraft traveling between North America and Europe, flying between the altitudes of 29,000 and 41,000 feet inclusive. Entrance and movement along these tracks is controlled by special Oceanic Control Centres air traffic controllers to maintain separation between airplanes. The primary purpose of these routes is to allow Air Traffic Control to effectively separate the aircraft. Because of the volume of NAT traffic, allowing aircraft to choose their own co-ordinates would make the ATC task far more complex. They are aligned in such a way as to minimize any head winds and maximize tail winds impact on the aircraft. This results in much more efficiency by reducing fuel burn and flight time. To make such efficiencies possible, the routes are created twice daily to take account of the shifting of the winds aloft and the principal traffic flow, eastward in North America evening and westward twelve hours later.

A typical North Atlantic Track consist typically of 5 segments. Have a look here:



On the left and right you see a large number of so called oceanic exit or entry points, depending on whether you are flying west or east. The tracks change twice daily and need to be entered into the Flight Management System. Pilots can do so manually, or it gets uploaded with the rest of the flight plan and pilots just verify it as part of their flight preparation.

Across most land masses jet airliners fly along High Altitude Jetways. These are pre-defined routes between specific points on the map/globe.



Here you see how for instance a large country as the USA is covered by means of a number of these High Altitude Jetways.



As you can see in the NAT as well as on the High Altitude Jetways these are all straight lines, so no great circle. However, flight planners / pilots will of course try to pick their route in such a way they get as near to a great circle as possible. There are other factors to be considered as well as suggested by other members, e.g. jet stream etc.

Jeroen

[slicvic]

So why do we have a flight with no callsign?

[BoneCollector]

Originally Posted by slicvic

So why do we have a flight with no callsign?

Attachment 1633347

As far as I can understand, it could be due to a few factors like a private owner or maybe the details not fed into the transponder?

Private owner.


Private owner.




Nepal Airlines.


Nepal Airlines.

As one can see, even the flight route is not visible at times.

Anyone who can throw more light on it?