Airfield Radio Operator uses FR24 to provide Radar Information!

Mooney_Driver wrote:

I’d be very wary using FR for anything but pure entertainment. A lot of airplanes show astonishing position inaccuracies, vanish into thin air and re-appear and so on. It can be informative yes, but unless taken with a bucket of salt, also quite misleading to point out traffic this way.

You are quite right. Below is what showed up on a recent flight. This was not the image my wife was hoping to see when she was checking my whereabouts (which she shouldn’t do anyway but that’s a different story )

Sure; FR24 is not going to work over the open sea.

Also I can’t see there being many FR24 “community members” in NW Africa

In Europe, FR24 works really well, especially above a few thousand feet.

Peter wrote:

In Europe, FR24 works really well, especially above a few thousand feet.

Even so I’ve watched light aircraft positions on FR24 disappear and jump around quite a bit while following them over the UK, although they tend to be the ones emitting Mode-S but with no ADS-B (so are positioned by multilateration).

FR24 shows nothing for Mode C. It needs Mode S or ADS-B.

Of course this is an issue for anybody with a Mode S transponder who wants to be anonymous: they have to fly with it totally turned off because turning on the transponder (even just for Mode A – another useless thing to be doing) always radiates the Mode S bit. In UK Class G you can do this (much to the irritation of many others) but it does limit things elsewhere.

Not sure if thats true. My friend did a flight today in his plane with the GTX330 transponder on mode A and nothing came up on FR24. He did it just to see if FR24 tracked it on Mode A and it seems it doesn’t.

Also I am not sure if a regular Mode S like a GTX328 shows up on FR24. I think it has to be ADS-B out, as the Sundowner I was flying N6632L never used to show up on FR24 and I tried it several times.

Maybe both are anomolies.

Squittering ADS-B out with SIL 10^-7, I find FR24 is pretty accurate, with very few breaks, even at low level in sparsely populated areas.

I get the impression that few British ATC or FIS stations can see ADS-B, but that the folks at Lakenheath could when I asked for a low ATZ transit.

Edit: before enabling “ES” on my GTX330, FR24 was very hit and miss below about FL60.

My friend did a flight today in his plane with the GTX330 transponder on mode A and nothing came up on FR24. He did it just to see if FR24 tracked it on Mode A and it seems it doesn’t.

An excellent point – would make sense. No point in showing Mode A targets at all.

Actually that could help explain the large number of Mode A targets in the UK…. nearly all of them are low level traffic, below say 1500ft, but obviously you don’t know that unless you spot them visually.

I think it has to be ADS-B out

ADS-B is definitely not needed. I don’t have it, and I show up very well, on 7000 and other squawks.

I get the impression that few British ATC or FIS stations can see ADS-B, but that the folks at Lakenheath could when I asked for a low ATZ transit.

That would make sense I even wonder how many British ATCOs can even see Mode S. Their signature on the Official Secrets Act will prevent them posting the answer here

It’s been discussed at my local airfield about setting up a pilot aware base station and displaying the output on a flat screen TV.

I quite like the idea.

Peter wrote:

Their signature on the Official Secrets Act will prevent them posting the answer here

I admit to not being familiar with how the UK civil service works… Certainly there are thing an ATCO knows that makes sense not to put in the open – but how can it be a national secret if a ATC position gets mode S data or not?

@Peter,

Yes, I also get the impression that many British ATC units can’t see Mode S.

So the station mentioned in the OP probably has more accurate, but less comprehensive, situational info from FR24 than most licensed ATC units.

I think that the correct way to find out is to send NATS, CAA and MoD a formal Freedom of Information request, rather than to rely on an anonymous post on even this most informative of private internet websites. Where the ATCOs and FISOs here might help is to define the wording of such a request.

It would be useful for the CAA to publish which units can and can’t see mode S and ES. No point in wasting airtime telling them guff that they can see on their LCD screens.

And on the subject of ADSB-out, I think we should all be squittering by now. I’m not in favour of regulation to that effect, but I think the CAA should offer a substantial bunch of “carrots”.