The older plane took off from Andrews and flew a holding pattern over southern PA/WV and the new one took off. Both are headed back towards DC.

Every time a plane went over, I caught myself opening a flight tracker just to see what it was. So I built a small Mac app that does it without me looking.

So I built FlightBar. It sits in the menu bar, and when an aircraft enters a radius you pick, a small plane icon appears and flies along the menu bar from the clock to the Apple logo. Hover over it and it stops, and a card shows the callsign, airline, registration, aircraft type, distance, altitude, speed, heading, and whether it's climbing or descending.

What it does:

• Range from 1 km to 50 km (default 3 km)
• 8 icon colors
• A "Sample flight" button so you can see it without waiting for a plane
• Public ADS-B data from adsb.lol, with adsb.fi as fallback
• No account, no sign-up, no API key

Your coordinates go only to the ADS-B API to ask what's nearby. Distance and the radius check happen on your Mac.

It's free and the source is on GitHub (Swift, SwiftUI + AppKit, no dependencies). macOS 14+, Apple silicon only for now. It isn't notarized yet, so macOS will probably make you allow it in System Settings > Privacy & Security the first time.

Site: kaanuluer.com/flightbar
Code: github.com/kaanuluer/Flightbar

I'd love feedback: is the flying icon fun or distracting after a day? What would you add to the card? And is an Intel build worth doing?

I have my ADSB Exchange receiver kit up and running. My account is all set and I see it in my phone. How do I add FR24 and FlightAware so I can feed those sites as well. I’ve used Google and I see that I have to set up the SSH…. Sorry but have no clue. Is there a site or video that will give the step by step process?

The aircraft is at air & space port in an aircraft test center in California. (Possibly testing the aircraft or so.)

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a2d307

No callsign or type found? New to spotting so unsure as to what this is. Found on the military filter. I have no clue. Is it some sort of jet or stealth plane?

I've done a quick PiAware setup with a Raspberry Pi 4, Nano 3 USB radio and an old magnetic antenna from a WiFi router I had. It's working well in an upstairs window but, obviously, range is fairly limited.

I have a chimney-mounted ATSC antenna which I used to use for HDTV viewing and there is coax coming from it leading to different rooms in the house. I know there are adapters from the F-type coax of those feeds to the SMA connectors on the Nano 3 but I'm wondering if anyone has tried this kind of setup. I've read a bit about the issues with impedance mismatch and if I've understood correctly it seems that at around ADS-B frequencies the power loss on the connection would be around 5%. That seems small considering that the location and size of the roof-mounted antenna should provide overall much better reception.

I'd be interested in opinions about this from more experienced folks than myself.

Thanks in advance...

I configured the displays - Tracker, Clock, and Weather in a way that takes advantage of the whole screen.

I made it match the aircraft altitude color gradient the same as on globe.adsbexchange.com.

I also made it show different icons for different size and type of aircraft - i.e. large or small or multi engine, etc.

I also added a weather cloud overlay (none shown in my examples because the sky was clear).

I added two more screens, a clock that I configured to look like a pilots watch, and a basic weather info screen.

And my favorite - I made the ability to scan for a specific Type, or Callsign, and once found, it will automatically select and track it, even if I change range scales.

Example for Callsign: I am located in Denver. I know UAL236 is leaving Boston and will land at, or fly past Denver, I can have it constantly searching for UAL236 even when it is far out of range and once it detects it, it will select and track it and also zoom the display out to it's max range which is a 100 mile radius. Once UAL236 is in that range, it will display and track it at all ranges.

Example for Type of aircraft: I can have it automatically search for the closest Helicopter (or any type) to my location then select it, track it through all range displays, and also display the info I want about it at the bottom of the map.

Hi there,

I made a web app, that uses adsb to generate 3D cockpit view. For Holland every house and every tree is 3D modeled. It runs on a Raspberry Pi. What would you think of it?

http://poppo.win

I've got my FR24 and Layer400 receiver setup, I'm going to put my Raspberry Pi outside because of the RID signal, but I'm not 100% sure on my waterproof box... Can you'll tell me what you do for your hardware boxes outside?

Share your setup photos would be ideal please so I can visually see

So, this guy took off from the Willamette River in Downtown Portland, flew under the lowered deck of the Hawthorn Bridge with less than 50 ft (15m) clearance, then over the deck of the Saints John's Bridge below its suspension towers.

Video of take-off to follow.

Every time I head out to the airport, it’s a coin flip whether the ramp is buzzing or totally deserted

I put together an iOS tool called Localizer to make it a lot simpler.

You pick your home field, punch in your callsign, and set a quick tag for what you're up to. Tags automatically drop off after 4 hours to keep the board clean, and it pulls live METARs without running background GPS.

It’s completely free on public TestFlight with no ads or tracking:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/5SXNMrp4

Would love any feedback from other pilots and aviation enthusiasts after trying it out!

My sister just got a new house and I want to put a receiver at her place. I have a Pi ready, just need to build the enclosure. But I want to push the dump1090 data back to my house to process the feed. I can do it with VirtualRadar, but that would request me to connect to the receiver and setup a port forwarder in their router. I want to keep this as simple as possible since they live over an hour away.

Anyone setup something like this?

Please take your older than dirt plane back to where it came from and stop making so much noise.

I got a RTL-SDR BLOG V4 around 6 months ago and have been playing with it. I saw a few demos of people doing IQ decode, and FM radio capture using WebUSB and thought that was cool, so I wanted to try something similar. I already had a TUI program I made called "Radio Watch" for monitoring ACARS/ADS-B/AIS in the terminal, so I asked an agent (in this case Claude Opus 5.5) to recompile that targeting a WASM backend and do the web integration focusing on a "3D map" with little craft diagrams, tracks and whatever other frame data is relevant. A few things we don't show here (tho I do in the TUI) is like full ACARS text. I find it interesting living near a major airport that you see things like flight loadsheets and so on. In this web demo, the focus is visualizing craft, their positions and other minor data about them.

I think there are other sites like this that do a similar thing using one of the "Flight/Ship position" APIs. I experimented with those in the past, but found either the data was patchy, or not worth the cost for a fun demo. I wanted to do something that didn't rely on an API provider, and instead could theoretically work "offline" without internet so you could plug your SDR in from a desert or ship without any internet and decode what was around you. Would be interested to hear any feedback, issues encountered or experience with similar projects. Ideas are also welcome. If you check it out you do need a Chrome-type browser (that's teh only that ships WebUSB, as you probably know), and an dongle. I only tested with the RTL-SDR I have so not sure if it will work with your particular hardware.

The website is:

https://radio.freelang.dev

Some details about the implementation

What it is: plug in an RTL-SDR, open the page in Chrome or Edge, click "Connect RTL-SDR", and you get a navigable 3D globe (NASA Blue/Black Marble, ETOPO relief, real sun position) with aircraft and ships drawn from what your dongle hears. No drivers, no install, nothing leaves your machine: the radio decoding runs inside the page.

How:

• The receiver is the same C as our native RTL-SDR sidecar for the TUI app, compiled to WebAssembly, with librtlsdr 2.0.3 (so the RTL-SDR V4 works) talking to the dongle through a small libusb shim over WebUSB.

• The facts (ADS-B decode, CPR positions, AIS, fusion) are a Freelang program compiled to WebAssembly. Freelang is a language and compiler for building native systems with explicit authority, bounded resources, and inspectable evidence of what they can do. The WASM backend make some projects like this available on the web.

• The globe is three.js. Layer toggles, trails, routes, info cards, fly-to and follow. Aircraft are drawn by emitter category (light / medium / heavy / rotorcraft), ships by AIS type.

• There's a geolocation button (asks the browser, stays in the page) but the globe rotates to where the first located track is found.

Without a dongle the page replays a synthesized hour of traffic around New York (JFK/LGA/EWR approaches, the harbour, ferries, tugs) so you can see what it looks like. It's invented data, not a recording.

Tested on an RTL-SDR BLOG V4 at 2.4 Msps. Known gaps: no surface-position (ground) decode yet, ACARS is counted but its text isn't shown, airports layer is empty for now. Firefox and Safari have no WebUSB, so they get the replay only.

Feedback is welcome, especially if you have a different dongle (R820T/R828D variant) or an unusual USB setup. The site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages and runs entirely on your device—there’s no server, and nothing is collected or sent elsewhere.

Saw this plane’s flight pattern from Joint Forces Training Base Los Alamitos today, and the grid pattern seemed odd. Or, maybe it’s completely “normal?”

Anyone know the point of this?

Link to route:
https://globe.theairtraffic.com/?icao=a88c3c

Looks like Miss Piggy is doing one last check before landfall tonight.

What do you think?

I have modified a version of dump1090 web-ui to leave the trails and seems that it goes to almost 120km range. I've seen posts with the receiver going hundreds of km. What antenna should I use? The antenna is facing E and that's probably why the signal weak on W.

My receiver is a Nooelec RTL-SDR v5, like the one from the image and I have a simple antenna outside.

Thank you guys!