mocoman. I see no problem with that, although I doubt you'd achieve it in a million years in this country.

Curious Pax: if you'd read my thread of 30 Jan you'd already know that not all aircraft carry Mode S

I did read it Chevvron - my comments were reiterating yours, not ignoring them!:confused:

Doh!; guess I'd better go to bed early this evening then........;)

:8

I ended up buying one......:E

nice to see and hear all the action:)

Of course I don't use either the SBS-1 or my scanner to listen/monitor ATC....

Farcical.

:E

See I'd be sorely tempted to own one of these things if the price wasn't so damned high.

If only the company were to send some freebies out to dedicated, highly skilled and professional air traffic personnel so that they may spread the word throughout their respective units and companies.

I think that's an excellent idea? ;)

niteflite01,

I think that's a great idea!:O

However, OFCOM don't like you listening or monitoring if not on duty so I'm afraid that it's unlikely that the company in question would be able to supply 'demo' units to be used for illegal activity......:E

Good point, well made :E

European flight tracking on openATC.com
 

Hi all,

this might be of interest to most of you: http://www.openatc.com is to my knowledge the only site that lets you track flights in european airspace.

Seems to be based on an open network of ADS-B receivers.

Cheers!

Well call me stupid, but I can't find any of my company flights either by registration or call sign ....

i can't get it to work either...though i did get up google earth...

maybe its finger trouble..??:{

I tried a few Heathrow inbounds on it last night and it wouldn't list any when I used the full flight number. However, if you just feed in the numbers, ie "123" for "BA123" it comes up with everything with 123 in it's flight number, then you can just choose. I tried several of the graphics features but they locked up my PC so bad I had to re-boot!!

Interesting though.. but I doubt if it is strictly UK-legal if it's information is derived from Mode S..

Works fantastic, thank you

Have a look at this screenshot I took, I had to reduce significantly in quality

http://img87.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image1nf6.jpg

And a few minutes later

http://img245.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image2nd2.jpg

Just tried it, looks good initially. Will have to look some more when I have time.

It is a shame Eurocontrol et al in Europe don't open up their data so much as the FAA do. If you want to use flight tracking for aircraft in the USA it is so much easier. Security wise I would have thought it would be the US who don't want to release data but seems the other way round.
For those of us in the Airlines it would be a very useful tool.

You must use ICAO callsigns, i.e. BAW for british airways, not BA

Also, the data is based on ADS-B, so airplanes that don't transmit ADS-B position information are not in the system.

Cheers

Also, I've noticed oddities like searching for 2027 didn't show up BAW2027 but searching on 27 did

I believe it relies on volunteers capturing data, so it isnt worldwide coverage

So it has a few quirks, but its a very early product

Would be nice to get all the Flight Explorer data into Google Earth for this kind of tracking, but useless without European data....

openATC does rely on volunteers contributing data from their ADS-B receivers. So far, coverage appears to have been fairly consistent, but many more contributors are needed. If you care to make a difference, and live in an area where sparse or no data is on openATC, here's how you can contribute:

1. You require a ADSL/cable internet connection that is always on and can manage about 250 MB a month in outbound traffic (that amounts to about 100 bytes per second on average... not much at all!)

2. Purchase a ADS-B (SBS-1) receiver from Kinetic Avionics. Costs about £500 all inclusive.

3. Download their beta version of Basestation, the software that's used to interface their receiver (link in their forums under Beta category)

4. Download the openATC feeder (link under "share your data" on the openatc site) and install on same computer as basestation.

5. fire it all up and keep it running 24/7!

I think Eurocontrol is giving a great example on how the euro bureaucracy really works: It sucks up all the money and leaves you with little in return, apart from laws and regulations. Thus, amateurs to the rescue!

Cheers

<<Costs about £400 all inclusive.>>

Best price I've ever seen is £499.95... or do you know something I don't? I see they also charge well over £100 for an outdoor antenna.

Sorry, you're right. I did a mental currency conversion from $1200 aussie dollars, but the pound seems weaker these days. sorry! I changed that the original post.

You don't need the external antenna. In fact, the best setup you can possibly have is to set up the SBS-1 in a box on your roof, use the supplied magmount antenna (mount it to your tv antenna for instance, vertically of course) and run a 12m USB cable to the box from your computer. I don't know how long the USB cable can get, but there are extenders that run USB over ethernet cable, and I've heard they can be very long. I'm running 12m without any problems (and without additional power supply, just USB).

I'm getting excellent range with that setup. You can also add a £75 preamp to make things even better.

Cheers

I am using it again, got aircraft coming into to LHR being picked up over Germany. As people have said it would be nice if Eurocontrol released this data officially!!
We live in hope.