Radar Alias Location displayed on Map.

[bappleby]

After reading this post I am struggling to comprehend the reasoning behind this, it seems crazy that this functionality hasn’t been included and even crazier the resistance to the idea. I don’t want to rock the boat but here is the reason why I want this information.

As a newbie I find this quite fascinating and I am always up for contributing. So I looked into purchasing and building a receiver kit and the trouble associated with setting up. I then investigated if anyone else in the area where I live is feeding data. Well I can’t tell can I !!!! Because if someone here where I live is already feeding data why would I bother to spend not only my money, but the time to set it up?

I don’t want to know the street address in this town of 60,000 people where the feeder is, I just want to know that somewhere in this vicinity there is an active, intermittent or defunct feed.

Going on the data received I suspect the closest feed is actually “Bloods” and he is located 110km away from here. I suspect this is why planes coming into land here at YSWG can’t be seen.

So why wouldn’t you want to plot the location of the feeds? I don’t mean plotting the exact coordinates, just the township? And if the feed is in a capital city just plot the suburb of the feeder?

[Bloods]

After reading this post I am struggling to comprehend the reasoning behind this, it seems crazy that this functionality hasn’t been included and even crazier the resistance to the idea. I don’t want to rock the boat but here is the reason why I want this information.

As a newbie I find this quite fascinating and I am always up for contributing. So I looked into purchasing and building a receiver kit and the trouble associated with setting up. I then investigated if anyone else in the area where I live is feeding data. Well I can’t tell can I !!!! Because if someone here where I live is already feeding data why would I bother to spend not only my money, but the time to set it up?

I don’t want to know the street address in this town of 60,000 people where the feeder is, I just want to know that somewhere in this vicinity there is an active, intermittent or defunct feed.

Going on the data received I suspect the closest feed is actually “Bloods” and he is located 110km away from here. I suspect this is why planes coming into land here at YSWG can’t be seen.

So why wouldn’t you want to plot the location of the feeds? I don’t mean plotting the exact coordinates, just the township? And if the feed is in a capital city just plot the suburb of the feeder?

Couldn't agree more bappleby!

I have tried articulating this issue and ran into a brick wall.

Yes I am near YNAR and that's why aircraft landing at YSWG are not showing up - so there is room for you if you want to spend the dough.

Yes, can't seem to get the boffins in the Ivory Tower to see sense. What's the harm of showing the receiver network plotted as an overlay on Maps?

Makes eminent sense to me.

Also, I like to filter by radar to see what I am contributing to the web, but the apps on apple and android currently don't offer this functionality (but it is available in the web browser).

Another of my "issues" with FR24. There has been a lot written about that one too, but if you have spent $1,800 plus on a good installation, why wouldn't you want to see what your upload is actually contributing to the overall picture?

I just hope someone is listening to the good suggestions and at least adding them to the "to do list".

Cheers mate.

[peterhr]

you can always use the web browser version of the site on your tablet to see if your radar shows.

i have seen a post today that listed all the active feeders in august, it wouldnt be hard to take that list, and a list of airports with latitude and longitude ad to make a kml file of active feeders and airports.

That said as your feeder signs in, FR24 does feed back the latitude and longitude you registered with ... if that was rounded to the nearest half degree and combined with the active feeder data, a good map would be produced without pintpointing someones house . I'm sure FR24 do know the location of ll active F- radars to within 5 meters. Only feers you cant pinpoint are N- ... they are diverse.

[bappleby]

Thanks for the reply. What you guys need to do is look at this from my perspective where I don’t have access to what you probably have in Premium. Also if you’re already a feeder you probably have other tools that you can see what you’re feeding and you probably have access to the raw data?

I have none of that, all I am looking at is the simple map on the website. All I want to see is what is the locations of the feeds around me so I can make an informed decision on whether it’s worth me contributing. If I can see that there are no feeds within 100 kilometres in every direction and I can nearly throw a rock onto the runway of YSWG then it says to me that it would be worth the effort and expense of contributing. If I looked at the map and could see that someone locally here is already contributing then it tells me not to waste my time or money.

If there is someone locally contributing I don’t want to know where they live. All I want to see is a dot in the middle of the town where I live indicating that somewhere within the vicinity there is already a contributor. So why can’t FR24 display the locations of contributors, not their street address, just the town/suburb/city where the contributor is?

If you can easily see where feeds are located it is also helpful to be able to encourage other people you know in areas with no feeds to become a contributor.

BTW, Bloods, you indicated $1800.00 for a setup? Now I really do want to know if it’s worth contributing if it’s going to cost anything like that. Also from what you can tell, whereabouts around me do you think are the closest contributors to YSWG? I believe to my east it could be at least 100 kilometres, possibly even Canberra. With the type of terrain to my east anything that isn’t high would not be registering.

[Oblivian]

Premium shows nothing different to the web version. The only thing premium does is allow people to run a local 'radarview' direct fed from their already purchased unit if they do not have planeplotter or other capturing SW with map output capability.

Everyone works out if it would be of advantage by doing what you are. Watching the map near you and by simply following AC on an area of the map. If it drops data within about 30-50k of you, its worth it to help overlap. Receivers coverage can range from as little as 50kms to over 300kms. That gives you a potential 600km mesh if there are 2 or 3 in the area.

If there is receivers in the area already you can almost gaurantee if you are seeing quite a bit of coverage then you are concerning yourself too much and it may well not be worth it. Sit back and enjoy. It will be obvious if you are having trouble seeing them and they dissappear already near you, of which.. knowing where people are won't help. As they could have lobe cover, directional (yagi) or obsticles in the way.. not everyone sees in a perfect circle.

Look at the main FAQ/Hardware page at TV Tuner Dongle feeding. They are as cheap as $20us from ebay. That is what they are referring to as cheap. THe most expensive cost to you is the cable/antenna. Remember a lot of feeders are not simply doing it to supply FR24. But are secondary feeding as a result of their own logging/hobby.. they have not simply decided to add to the community. They were already, and not part of the forum

[peterhr]

Raspberry Pi computer 40UKP, Tuner dongle 15Usd eBay, powersupply 15usd, homemade antenna - I made mine from old coaxial cable in the shed, SD card 10 dollars - that Will build a setup with up to 200 km radius range - depending on height and visibility of antenna.

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk 2

[Bloods]

BTW, Bloods, you indicated $1800.00 for a setup? Now I really do want to know if it’s worth contributing if it’s going to cost anything like that. Also from what you can tell, whereabouts around me do you think are the closest contributors to YSWG? I believe to my east it could be at least 100 kilometres, possibly even Canberra. With the type of terrain to my east anything that isn’t high would not be registering.

The $1,800 was made up of:-
$680 for a Kinetic SBS-3
$634 for a G59 Collinear antenna
$244 for a 30 foot mast
$200 labour for the installation
$1,757 total

To see what receivers are near YSWG, you just click on an aircraft and look at the radar field, write em down and look em up. Basically from what I can tell there are radars "near" Dubbo, Parkes, Corowa, Canberra and Narrandera in your vicinity. Where they are exactly, no-one knows. You are correct about terrain. If there are hills or mountains between the receiver and the aircraft, then there is no reception. So I can't "see" aircraft low over YSWG from YNAR for example.

It depends what you are interested in:- high flying aircraft or aircraft that are landing and taking off. Personally I find the latter more interesting, so if you are close to the airport, your input would be valuable both to the network and to you personally!

[peterhr]

So you can start at 200 dollars for a small rig then upgrade from there. In fact to can do it for less using a Windows pc ... But that means leaving a 200w pc on all the time ... The.Pi runs at about 5w

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk 2

[bappleby]

So you can start at 200 dollars for a small rig then upgrade from there. In fact to can do it for less using a Windows pc ... But that means leaving a 200w pc on all the time ... The.Pi runs at about 5w

Thanks for the info Peterhr. I used to muck with 6800 series processors back years ago as part of my trade. I had a look for a Rasberrypi and that’s no problem but I don’t seem to be able to find a dongle receiver in the price range you suggested. Would appreciate an example if you could post a link thanks. Tried to take this off line but doesn’t appear I can private message you on this forum. Appreciate your help.

[bappleby]

To see what receivers are near YSWG, you just click on an aircraft and look at the radar field, write em down and look em up. Basically from what I can tell there are radars "near" Dubbo, Parkes, Corowa, Canberra and Narrandera in your vicinity.

Thanks Bloods,
Yep, I sort of worked it out after a while but wouldn’t it be so easy to just set a flag that displayed the approximate locations instead? I still don’t get it !!!!

Anyway, quite surprising how far out west you are picking up AC and also quite surprising how few receivers there are. A few years ago I used to be a few hundred km N/W of you and it makes me wonder what sort of reach further west I would have had from there ,especially with the antennae set up I could have had there? I can’t believe how few receivers there are further south and also over into NW Victoria.

Anyway I might invest in a receiver but for the next 12 months I won’t be able to mount any sort of antenna that is to obtrusive. However I think that would be enough to cover the coverage hole here as they fly over the top all the time and you others pick up the more distant AC anyway.

Last minute thought, I know FR24 are offering receivers to areas they want to cover, if they don’t want to supply for free do they sell them? I am really busy with a job from hell and although I enjoy tinkering I would much prefer to simply purchase……..

[peterhr]

For the dongle do a search on ebay.com for r820t, find one that ships worldwide ... I'd go for the older bigger one 'cause I know it works don't forget you will need an mcx adaptor to get from the tiny antenna socket on the dongle to a proper feed wire.

Could someone put a link here to the pi+dongle setup topic here please, I can't do it with the tablet I'm on, thanks

Sent from my GT-P5110 using Tapatalk 2

[attigliano]

Could someone put a link here to the pi+dongle setup topic here please, I can't do it with the tablet I'm on, thanks

Link to Forum Raspberri PI + Dongle as FR24 feeder: http://forum.flightradar24.com/threa...e-to-feed-FR24

Link to SW image for Raspberry PI with dongle https://drive.google.com/folderview?...UE&usp=sharing

Poul

[peterhr]

Thanks Poul.

Once you have the bits, the most complex thing to do is antenna installation - software setup is maybe an hour.

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk 2

[Oblivian]

Thanks Bloods,
Yep, I sort of worked it out after a while but wouldn’t it be so easy to just set a flag that displayed the approximate locations instead? I still don’t get it !!!!

Nope, as I pointed out:
Not all station coverage is equal - its still not an accurate enough measure.
Not all receivers are online 24/7 - leading to more inaccuracy and complaints when people notice all the dots with no or bad coverage around them thinking it is helpful to alert the FR24 team
- Often weekends have more receivers online than weekdays.

Using markers, What may look like there is a hole, can quite likely turn out to be temporary outtage, or insignificant enough to be a waste of money if its as little as 10kms in reality.

Observing, and calculating via the track method if there is already receivers in the area, is a lot more accurate.