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New Downloads Page

by | Jul 15, 2024 | Downloads, Spotting

Data Downloads

Those of you who know me, will know that I’ve been collecting and processing aviation data for over 25 years. Those of you who don’t know me, well I have thousands of files – just from the FAA download site. But have been downloading many others for just about as long, where I identify that a file has changes I download and store it.

I have now decided to make some of the data sets available, to do this I have striped out most of the data and have created a stndard format for the registers and given free access to the data – why have I done this?

I have alwayd found that the ability for specific searches is missing in the official sites, for instance you can search by a registration, or an owner but the results are usually restricted. So the data files I have created are designed to be loaded into any standard application and you can search how you like, as an example all Cessna 177’s.

The information is minimal and one record per line, it is a list of comma separated values  containing registration, manufacturer, model, construction number and registrant. The registrant may be the owner, a company or an agency.

You should be able to load the data into Microsoft Excel or an equivalent, or a word processing package like word if you really wanted to print out the “thousands of pages”. Currently there are 350,000 active air frames available to download, covering Australia, Canada and the United States along with 375,000 de-registered frames from the United States Data. As a guide printing these out would run to approximately 20,000 pages.

 

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.

 

 

PIA Hiding in plain sight.

by | Jul 12, 2024 | Spotting

PIA and Hiding an Identity.

So, after President Biden signed the new FAA bill into law back in May 2024. I’ve been having a look at the implications for plane spotters. We’ve become used to the covenience of being able to identify an aircraft if we can see it, by using various means.

It’s become easier as we’ve gained access to more technology, so much so that it’s become the norm that we can identify almost all the aircraft that we can see – even the ones that are great distances away. By using applications like Flight Radar and ADSB, if you can see it you can in the main identify it.

But the new rules may change some of that, by allowing the owners of aircraft to hide the identity of the aircraft – not from the authorities, but from the public in general, which includes the plane spotting community. Now this only goes so far, the physical markings of the aircraft can’t be changed – what can be changed is the electronically broadcast identity. Which means that any spotter close enough, will be able to read off the registration and identify the aircraft.

But someone at a distance and using the tools that we as spotters have become so used to, will at the moment see one of the 50,000 fake ID’s that the FAA has allocated for this purpose.

There has been quite a number of news articles about people – in particular Elon Musk and Taylor Swift, wanting to stay anonymous and I don’t see a problem with that. Even if I think that it is a bit hypocritical, in as much as they cultivate a cult following and then want to hide from it – because anonymity allows them to hide what they don’t want people to see.

As I’m based in Scotland, I didn’t think that this would really affect me – however if you read this article here  you will see that the inference is that this may not just apply to US air space.

 

If you find this site useful, keep it running with a small dontation. Buy me a Doughnut by donating – I get hungry doing this.