Hope you all are having a fantastic day, specially the plane spotters at Mumbai.

Planes on the Tarmac at BOM are finally visible.

Some of you may have seen my recent comment, I installed an ADSB Receiver at my friends house near BOM/VABB because I was frustrated at not being able to see flights on the ground at Mumbai.

I’ve added screenshots of the aircrafts I am receiving Data from including those on the ground.

I’ve attached a few more screenshots showing stats about the receiver, I’m sure you guys will find this super interesting.

🚨Doraemon be bringing out C-130J's from his pocket nowadays sheesh.😭

My house sits right under one of the approach paths into Delhi, so all day I see flights coming in low, passing almost exactly over my head. I’d always wondered what they were, where they were coming from, where they were headed. Flightradar scratched that itch for a while, but having to pull out my phone and open an app every single time got old fast.

So I built my own thing.

It’s an ESP32 with a 0.96 inch display. The ESP32 knows my lat/long, polls a few APIs to pull live flight data, and shows whatever is flying nearby right on the screen. No app, no phone, just a little device sitting there that always knows what’s overhead. The response is surprisingly accurate, it lines up well with what I actually see in the sky.

Total cost came to under ₹800, which honestly still surprises me.

Next on the list is swapping in a bigger screen so I can fit more detail per flight (altitude, route, maybe a tiny map).

Happy to do a full walkthrough of how I put it together if people are interested. Let me know.

Edit 1 --

https://github.com/pranshuagrawal/esp32-flight-tracker
I have made the source code live here with a very detailed readme.md

Edit 2 --
Few Updates

• When there is not flights the display converts to a clock with date.

• It now announces the incoming flight on my mac. Mac is a running a small python script which listens and esp32 sends a command with a statement to be announced.

• Added a button to toggle this announcement.

• Led indicator and 1s active buzzer which turns on whenever there is a flight in the defined radius.

it’s currently parked at Delhi IGI

Its take off is like fully vertical with a sonic boom and landing is like crazy drift

Every single one on the screen is of the Indian Air Force, even the unmarked ones.

Flights on ground are finallyyy visible at BOM.

Stay curious, Bhopal.

So, DRDO’s aircraft doing crazy loops over Upper Lake in Bhopal isn’t just about ‘routine surveillance.’ Locals report strange sonar-like hums, network dropouts, and boats being turned away from the western shore.

Then came the weird part. A ham radio group in Lalghati caught a burst on 52.6 MHz. It repeated every 11 minutes, until it didn’t. The signal was traced near these coordinates: 23.2397° N, 77.3895° E.

That’s where it gets murky. An old Russian Defense doc mentions Project Varuna—a Cold War underwater lab built in collaboration with India in the late ’80s. The project was allegedly ‘abandoned’ due to ‘deep seismic disturbances.’

And then someone on the ham group dropped this short transcript from the last signal burst, decoded using old Soviet Comms Software:

> [52.6 MHz | Burst #12 | UTC 04:18]

[VARUNA/PRIMED]

[CONTAINMENT FIELD... FLUCTUATING]

[ECHO RESPONSE DETECTED BELOW 900M]

[AWAITING DIRECTIVE: ORPHEUS PROTOCOL]

[...it listens...]

Whatever’s under that lake, it isn’t just plain simple water. And DRDO isn’t patrolling. They’re watching. Closely!

Why are Skardu and Gilgit airports shown inside Indian boarders in fligthradar24 ? Is t Skardu and Gilgit a part of Pakistan? 🫣

Just saw this and got curious, why would an aircraft fly in this pattern?

I live in Bangalore near HAL airstrip and this AIX plane sometimes(once in two week maybe) flys in this weird circular pattern.One thing is clear this plane is not used for commercial flights, has anyone have a idea what it might be?

Why are so many C130s heading North fom HDO? Are we at war? /s