Other Tracking Sites
Over the time I have researched this series of originally three and now four posts, I have come across a number of tracking sites. This post covers some of them, the ones which I think are better as a source of information for plane spotters – by implication this does include aviation photographers.
Each of these sites does have its own positives and negatives, they may not neccessarily be what you think. I will include the reasons for my choices, these are personal and do not reflect on the sites as there may well be changes underway that I am unaware of. One other thing to bear in mind is that I do not have any kind of affiliation to any of these sites – nor do I have a subscription to any of these sites.
AirNav RadarBox
I have used this site a number of times, in general I find it easy to navigate and it automates a number of functions – like showing tracks when you zoom into a small area. Also of benefit is the ticker displaying the most watched aircraft, where a simple click will focus the map on that aircraft and highlight it. There are a nice range of filters, which are easilly accessible.
What I do not really like, is that the display seems to be very busy with everything being the same colour – it can be difficult to spot aircraft on the screen and you need to hunt around a bit. Also, I should tell you that I personally have a downer on blocked aircraft – of which there are quite a number courtesy of the fact that they take data from the FAA SWIM feed and have to obey the rules..
This site is a great site if you would like to start partcipating by becoming an ADS-B data collector and feeder, you can source what you need and there is quite a lot of help if you are not technically minded. And to be fair their tarrifs for the commercial products don’t seem overly expensive. As the site offers a number of additional features like audio ATC feeds.
ADSBHub
This is good site, but creating an account proved to be troublesome – possibly just me. One of the features that I really like on this site is that you can select one of the feeding stations and look at the aircraft it can see. This gives a great indicator of the coverage that you are likely to have if you are thinking about setting up your own base station.
Again, the display is very busy and the aircraft Icons are nearly all the same colour. It is simple to use but when you take the display and concentrate on a single aircraft from one of the reporting stations, you see just the ICAO code and limited other data – no aircraft registration. So from a spotting perspective not such a great site, from an ADSB network perspective it is a very good site.
The Air Traffic
This is the site created by the ubiquitous Mr Jack Sweeny, it was created after NetJets purchased ADSB Global Exchange. This is his way of making sure that he displays the data he wants to display, good on him. But I would caution that that is how Global Exchange started out before the dollars were flashed infront of the owner.
Anyone who has used ADSB Global Exchange will be instantly familiar with the user interface, all the controls and actions are the same – although some colours have been change to protect the inocent (it also lets you know that you are somewhere else). All the same features are available, nothing has been added except independence – there are now nearly 1300 feeders to the site.
As to the negatives, well as long as Mr Sweeny can resource the time required – they are the same as ADSB Global Exchange without a jet charter business in charge where technically they could selectively filter flights by registration or ICAO hex code and make their own jets very difficult to track. Should time become an issue for someone approaching the final year of full time education, there is the possibility for the site to become a bit of a chore for him.
ADSB Finland
Oh no I hear you say, not another ADSB clone. Well not only did Mr Sweeny setup his own site, another group of enthusiasts did the same thing to maintain independence – I don’t think that there was any communication between the two parties but I don’t know. Anyway, all the functionality of ADSB Global Exchange but with independence and in this case – in excess of 2000 data feeds to the site.
So the drawback is that it has less feeders tha ADSB Global Exchange, so will have less coverage – although it will have more coverage than The Air Traffic site. However it is another independent site bringing variation to the spotter ecosystem, along with free access to the data.
Other Sites
There are a number of other sites, I have come across some while doing some of the research for these posts – what are they like? Well the ones that I tested went from, didn’t work at all to pretty mediochre.
The OpenSky site covered in one of the previous posts is good if you are looking for something a bit different, the Radar Box site is good from an automation point of view providing you don’t mind the blocked aircraft details. Anyway. I hope this series of four posts has given some insight to the world of tracking aircraft and that you find something of use in them.