North American coverage

[Zwirko]

I find the North American coverage on FR24 a bit strange. For example, at the moment there is one aircraft over southwestern Texas and one over central Oregon (just two random locations I picked). There are no other aircraft within 800 miles or so of these two. Why do so many radars in North America see so little, in what must actually be very, very busy skies? Do the owners of those radars see more than what they share? Where are all the missing flights?

[Oblivian]

The range of most radars is only around 250nm unless over-lapping with other radar receivers in the area.

Generally the uploader will only upload ADSB (full GPS location) data from a standard output stream. If the operator has filters running, for particular aircraft only, these may apply to the output data also depending on their setup.

The alternative of course, may be that there are not that many upgraded ADSB/transponder aircraft, and the rest are only reporting altitude, which cannot be plotted.

Here, I have a ratio of around 5:1 that are not transmitting location information. Only upgraded longhaul and Airbus units show up to me.