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Serial Number Missing!

by | Aug 8, 2024 | Aviation News, Online Logging, Spotting, Spotting Locations, Spotting News

No Number Visible!

I recently visited Prestwick, to see a couple of Australian C-130’s and have a quick look at some other stuff that was in. There was a KC-135R sitting over on the North side, the only discernable marking was the US Flag on the tail. There was no serial number visible, this is in line with the new Air Mobility Command policy – but is not a great help to a plane spotter.

I had watched it on ADSB as it came over the western approaches, watched as it did a quick pirouette and then landed at Prestwick. It’s transponder code matched the known code for 62-3553, but from the mound there was nothing visible on the aircraft to confirm that. Today I loaded the pictures I had taken to have a look for the Data Block, it was not visible anywhere on the port side of the aircraft – even with the photographs zoomed in to 200%.

Plane spotters have known that the removal of the visible serial numbers was happening, however I for one was unaware that the data block would be removed or relocated to somewhere that it wasn’t visible.

So when the next one comes in, I’ll need to try and be there when it arrives and when it departs – just to try and find the data block. Without a visible serial, the plane spotter is effectively in the dark as to the true identity of the aircraft. The transponder can be set to transmit pretty much any code, which could equate to any aircraft – the loss of the ability to use the Mk I eyeball to confirm the ID is pretty catastrophic.

I have known that this would happen for 15 years, as back in 2009 Lockheed, Boeing and the USAF started the project for the use of RFID tracking of Aircraft and Parts. The original news article is here, there are quite a few others around one of the most informative is this one here.

So spotters will have to become a bit more creative about how they get the actual numbers, or they just have to trust that the Hex Code is correct – not that easy to do when you remember that in the past there have been USAF aircraft with a different serial on each side of the tail!

 

Support this site.

It does take some time and effort to create these downloads, also there are a number of costs associated with running the site. So if you can consider supporting this site with a donation it would be helpful, if you find the site useful then why not treat me to a doughnut – or even a doughnut and a coffee if you’re feeling really flush.

But regardless of whether you donate or not, I hope that the contents of the files are of some use, also bear in mind that the files are as dated in the bar graph on the down load page – I will try and produce a new data set every month or more frequently if time allows.

Please note these files are provided for personal use, if you want to use them for any other purpose or if you want to make them available through your own site – get in touch first.

 

 

Latest File Updates

by | Aug 7, 2024 | Aviation News, Database, Online Logging, Spotting

August Update

Well the downloads page has been updated, all four of the downloadable files are now dated the 6th of August 2024 – providein a total of just over 730,000 records available for download. As normal the down load files are provided in a Comma Separated Valuses file, this can be loaded into any application capable of supporting the format – a good place to start are any of the spread sheet applications.

Over the next couple of weeks I intend to add a couple of files, these will be aditional to the existing Austalian and Canadian registers – where I intend to add the deregistered aircraft as far back as I can. Along with composite files covering surviving WWII aircraft, but these will take some time to create – it may be that I create some files of individual types first.

As usual the rules on the use of the data are free to use for personal use, but a mention of a donation would be nice if you’re going to post on your own site.

 

Support this site.

It does take some time and effort to create these downloads, also there are a number of costs associated with running the site. So if you can consider supporting this site with a donation it would be helpful, if you find the site useful then why not treat me to a doughnut – or even a doughnut and a coffee if you’re feeling really flush.

But regardless of whether you donate or not, I hope that the contents of the files are of some use, also bear in mind that the files are as dated in the bar graph on the down load page – I will try and produce a new data set every month or more frequently if time allows.

Please note these files are provided for personal use, if you want to use them for any other purpose or if you want to make them available through your own site – get in touch first.

 

 

Files Update

by | Jul 19, 2024 | Database, Downloads, Online Logging, Spotting

The New Data Files.

Have grown tired of waiting for the Australian data file to be updated, so have ammended the downloads page to reflect the data set used to create the files along with the record count for each file.

Hopefully the Australian file will be updated soon, I’m currently working on converting the ancillary datafiles from the Australian site and expect to have them done for the middle of August this should add a few thousand additional records to the downloads available. It will comprise at least two files, the derigistered and the changed registration files.

Following that I expect to be uploading some more check lists and a number of military data sets, but first I’m off line for a couple of weeks.

If anyone has anything specific that they would like, I’ll see if I can extract it and put it in a format that can be used from the downloads page. But it’s unlikely that I’ll be picking up any stuff from the site until the begining of August at the earliest.

What’s in a sighting?

by | Jul 18, 2024 | Database, Online Logging, Spotting

Logging aircraft.

When it comes to your spotting log, it is all about personal choice or preference. Two plane spotters at the same airfield on the same day will obviously log all the same stuff, so far so good. But it is possible that, even though the sigtings may be logged in an identical manner on the day. When they are transferred to some kind of master log, they could be kept in an entirely different manner – there may even be completely different information stored.

Our two ficticious spotters, lets call them Fred and Joe might have different perspectives on the information that they want to record. As an example Fred may have seen the aircraft before, for Joe it may be a new frame. If the registration or the owner of the aircraft has changed, for Fred it may be a “paint scrape” for Joe it’s still a first sighting of that particular aircraft.

Fred may record additional information, for example “Brought the Barcelona Team to the Cup Final”. Joe on the other hand may just record it as a “Football Charter”, or he might add nothing to the log entry. So the entries that you create in your log on the day make a difference to the information further down the line if you want to do any kind of research or writing.

What do I record?

Typically I’d try for a photograph with the registration of serial number visible and sort it out later, I don’t tend to keep additional notes – unless it’s something out of the ordinary. For stuff that’s flying and is too far away for an image, Flight Radar and ADSB Global are your friend (which is why I have a Bee in my Bonnet over LADD and PIA), at the moment you can get most of the information that you need from these sources – with the caveat that LADD hides departure and arrival airports on Flight Radar and PIA hides everything on both Flight Radar and ADSB Global – inside US Air Space.

In my log, I generally record the basic information that I provide for down load on the site. What I add is a date, a location and whether it was the first time that I saw the air frame. I seldom add any notes other than a photograph ID so that I can reference the photograph instead of searching through the 50,000 or so digital images that I now have.

What should you record?

In my opinion, if you’re just starting out – everything that you can. As you become more experienced and refine your skills as a spotter, you’ll recognise what you need to record to give you what you want from the hobby.

PIA Traffic is it increasing?

by | Jul 16, 2024 | Aviation News, Online Logging, Spotting, Spotting Locations, Spotting News

Is PIA traffic increasing?

I’d say that it most certainly is, since President Biden signed the new FAA legislation on the 16th of May 2024 there seems to be an increas in the visible traffic on ADSB Global.

What is PIA, it’s short for Privacy ICAO Address. Without delving into it too much, it’s a method that the US Government provides through it’s FAA, that can be used by any private individual to hide their private flying habits from the general public. The ICAO part is short for the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

Why bother about the fact that someone wants to hide, actually I’m not that bothered. I am a little iritated about the fact that a number of the individuals who want to obfuscate the fact that they are zooming around in private jets, are in some cases the people who would have you believe that they are in favour of a greener sustainable future.

Or in other cases people who have cultivated a public following, then decided that they want to cherry pick what the public sees of their lifestyle. I understand the security concerns that these people may have, infact I can sympathise with them on that point – not from any personal perspective, but for the reason that being famouse doesn’t give anyone an excuse to bother you.

My issue with the privacy codes comes from my interest in plane spotting, I don’t actually care who is on the aeroplane – I really only want to know if I’ve seen the plane before or not. As a plane spotter it is pretty annoying, I’m still looking for aircraft identities from many years ago. And as far as this PIA program goes I wasn’t bothered by it until I discovered that it may be used internationally.

There are many problems associated with people knowing where you are and are going, but in truth trying to hide the identity of your private Jet isn’t very effective – see the article from Forbes here and the lack of effectiveness becomes obvious. The chances of hiding from the spotting community are slim in the short term and pretty well impossible in the long term. Hiding from others not interested enough to use all the services and tecnology available might be easier, but in many cases these may well be the people that you want to cultivate.

As a footnote I would like to point out that the PIA program is free and available to any one, the FAA have assigned more than 50,000 ICAO codes to the program. As of now only a few hundred of these have been allocated, in reality to be effective, the codes have to be changed every few flights at least – but the logistics of that are quite difficult. So at the moment, the PIA program is enjoying very limited success.

 

Support this site.

It does take some time and effort to create these downloads, also there are a number of costs associated with running the site. So if you can consider supporting this site with a donation it would be helpful, if you find the site useful then why not treat me to a doughnut – or even a doughnut and a coffee if you’re feeling really flush.

But regardless of whether you donate or not, I hope that the contents of the files are of some use, also bear in mind that the files are all from the 24th of June 2024 – I will try and produce a new data set every month or more frequently if time allows.

 

 

How can I identify a PIA aircraft?

by | Nov 22, 2023 | Aviation News, Database, Online Logging, Optical Enhancement, Radio, Spotting, Spotting Locations, Spotting News

Well this is a bit of a conundrum, you see a plane look it up on one of the tracking sites and all there is is a ICAO code and a call sign. Everything else, registration, type, origin, destination and many other spotter friendly features are not displayed.

How then do you find out the actual identity of the aircraft and whatever other information that you like to collect?

Well the truth is you won’t get the information without some effort, it’s unlikely that you’ll find out the information without the help of other spotters. The only certain way of identifying these aircraft is a physical sighting, at either end of the flight – so if you can’t be at the airport when it lands then other spotter groups would probably be the place to start.

Typically a week day view of US air space will show thousands of aircraft, and the vast majority of these are readily identifiable using applications or web sites like flightradar24 or in this case globe.adsbexchange.com.

So in most cases looking up and seeing an aircraft, will if you know where you are – make the identification fairly straight forward, a quick look at the app or website and you have everything you need.

In the begining tracking flights was more technical, there were tools like ACARS – but you needed certain technical skills to use that to track aircraft. But along came flightradar24, this was an absolute boon to the spotters.

Lack of privacy was seen to be a problem, so along came the FAA’s LADD (Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed) – which is a filter that the FAA puts in place for anyone taking a data feed from them – the image is LADD subscribed aircraft.

Just to be clear, these three screen shots were taken within a few minutes of each other the bottom shot is filtered by PIA subscribed aircraft.

As you can see, there aren’t that many aircraft in the view. But what I can say is that there is literally no information that would interest a spotter, the navigational information is there but little else is available.

In the next post I’ll go over the options and list some of the ways that you can try and find out the aircraft identity. But in the mean time consider this, both the LADD and the PIA services are free – so it’s likely that people using the LADD service will move to the PIA service.