This topic will never die

[Kpin]

From time to time people ask why they never see their radar credited for tracking a flight.

And the answer is (paraphrasing); It doesn't matter because the one feeder mentioned is just one of potentially dozens of feeders who see the aircraft at the same time. And rest assured that your feed is also very important even if you are not 'credited'. Even more so with MLAT which takes 3-4 feeders to resolve a position and they will never be individually credited. And to the end user of the site or the apps it is of no importance.

And there are other ways you can see the results of your data feed e.g. the Radarview and the individual statistics page as well as the new ranking list, all provide to feeders by Flightradar24. There is also the option of using third party software like Planeplotter and Virtual Rader Server.

I do agree, but nevertheless for some feeders the ultimate confirmation and satisfaction is to be able to see THEIR radar linked to flights on Flightradar24. If it doesn't occur even sporadically then some may lose interest and close down.

My pragmatic suggestion is this: When you hover the cursor over altitude in feet the equivalent altitude in meters is shown, so could you not enhance the radar info box so that when the user hovers over the radar name, a list of the other feeders seeing the aircraft is shown?

I acknowledge that this of very little importance to most users but it is the focal point of many feeders and the psychology behind being recognized for your effort should be taken seriously. Money is saved for every feeder box that stays connected.

[airnrail]

To be fair, no other tracking site that I know of shows feeder IDs in the way that FR24 does and from a marketing perspective that is surely a valuable point of difference for FR24 notwithstanding the sheer number of ADS-B feeders, and therefore excellent coverage, that FR24 has compared to the others. A long time ago someone made the point in these forums that FR24 is essentially a volunteer organisation and an important part of keeping volunteers motivated is, as Kpin correctly says, recognition. There will always be someone complaining that they never see their feeder because it gets beaten to the punch by others but I suspect that there are many more who do see their feeder, perhaps only occasionally, and that provides them with a degree of satisfaction and the will to keep feeding.

[Patrick Reeves]

I picked the Netherlands at random. As of Nov. 6 there were 256 feeders, with an average range of 59 NM., a lot of them probably clustered around Schiphol. So you could hover over an A/C and clutter the screen with 200+ radar callsigns. Not to mention the extra bandwidth. Not workable IMO.

If FR24 wants to monetize it, maybe there are some feeders who would pay for the extra bandwidth. Me, I prefer the front-end as clutter free as possible. And there's always radarview or VRS if you want to gratify your ego.

[Mike]

It's not just a question of showing the data. It's a question of first processing the data, and later sending it to every user on aircraft click. It adds a lot of extra processing power and it would probably double the amount of data sent to every user, every click where we already today have issues with data capacity.

Another point is that I can't see anyone watching lists of 100-200-300 radar ID's to find their ID more than possibly once.

[patrick1501]

I agree with Kpin about recognition: I bought my own equipment, climbed on the roof to install the antenna, modified the network infrastructure to have the most bandwidth possible, so it is a real satisfaction when I see an aircraft with my radar code.
But the best way to see planes with your radar code is not to click on planes one by one. I setup a filter in which I placed my radar code. Most of the time, I have an empty map, but from time to time a plane appears, and it is sometimes very far from my location.
But on the other hand, I perfectly understand Mike and his concern about the performance of the site, which should in no way be sacrificed for the ego of the feeders.

[Kpin]

It's not just a question of showing the data. It's a question of first processing the data, and later sending it to every user on aircraft click. It adds a lot of extra processing power and it would probably double the amount of data sent to every user, every click where we already today have issues with data capacity.

Another point is that I can't see anyone watching lists of 100-200-300 radar ID's to find their ID more than possibly once.

Point take, to some extend. It should be possible to only transmit the extended list of feeders when the individual user hover the cursor over the radar name. And if they do that, then it would be okay to show all feeders with the aírcraft in sight even if it blocks the view of anything else. Once the user has examined the list they can move the cursor and carry on looking at the map.

[Oblivian]

Point take, to some extend. It should be possible to only transmit the extended list of feeders when the individual user hover the cursor over the radar name. And if they do that, then it would be okay to show all feeders with the aírcraft in sight even if it blocks the view of anything else. Once the user has examined the list they can move the cursor and carry on looking at the map.

I'm not sure you understand the overheads required to process and display on a web page data every 4 seconds and hang onto a list of (in some areas) 20-30 sources to compile to do so... Even for it to only be displayed with an action, it has to occur regardless to be ready for display.

[Kpin]

I work with 'Big Data' in Massive Multi Processor / In-memory computing. If the database is constructed correctly this is no big deal.
And as for data transmission this could be maybe 100 x 7-8 characters - less than a kilobyte - and only to the few users requesting it by hovering over the feeder name.

I think 'we don't want to do it' is a better argument than 'It can't be done'. But new feeders are joining all the time and the topic will never die.

[Olov]

I work with 'Big Data' in Massive Multi Processor / In-memory computing. If the database is constructed correctly this is no big deal.
And as for data transmission this could be maybe 100 x 7-8 characters - less than a kilobyte - and only to the few users requesting it by hovering over the feeder name.

I think 'we don't want to do it' is a better argument than 'It can't be done'. But new feeders are joining all the time and the topic will never die.

Of course it "can be done", and we want to do it. If our database is "correctly" constructed or not is something you could debate, but it's at least not constructed for us to do this easily.
There are also 100:s of other things we "want to do", but we can't do everything.

[Kpin]

Of course it "can be done", and we want to do it. If our database is "correctly" constructed or not is something you could debate, but it's at least not constructed for us to do this easily.
There are also 100:s of other things we "want to do", but we can't do everything.

Tack, Olav. That is a very fair and constructive answer. Much better than the 'shut up and keep feeding' responses in times gone by, but in fact that is what I will do now - Shut up and feed data.

[Patrick Reeves]

If you want to get an overview of your contribution, you can zoom to your coverage area, filter by your radar callsign and replay the last 12 or so hours at 40 to 50x.

I was surprised at how often my callsign pops up. Of course, it's dependent on how far your coverage is and the amount of traffic in your area. 50 to 100 NM out seems to be the sweet spot. I've seen 8-10 AC simultaneously w/ my callsign using this method.