I live in NJ and new to this. Some questions about AF1 / military?

I live between MMU (Morristown airport) and Trump's golf course) so we've heard / seen interesting planes overhead (before I started feeding and learning about this site), as he visits.

Now that I know about this, I have some questions:

What you see on the map here are all planes / ADSBExchange doesn't censure anything. But the planes have to have ADS-B on, right?

It would seem that military wouldn't have that on at times? And then you won't see them on the map on this website?

Last night Trump was flying from MMU back to Washington. I happened to look on the map on my phone and saw a large plane and a small plane very close to each other heading out of MMU. I'm figuring that was the 757 he uses (because the 747 AF! is too big for MMU), and a fighter jet? When we looked in the sky, we saw the larger plane but no fighter? jets nearby.

Within a couple seconds, the little jet stopped showing up. And the attached pic is what I saw when I clicked on the bigger plane.



I think I saw something like that on arrival 1 time - 2 jets flying close to another bigger plane showed up within a couple miles of landing. Then they disappeared from the map but the bigger plane stayed visible.

I guess they could come in quick at the last minutes and I didn't see them come in.

I think the 90-0015 is the tail number? And oogling that AE4AE6 number does link to pictures of 90-0015. What's the AE4AE6 called?

Overall, any advice on how to use ADSBExchange to see POTUS's plane / military planes better? Just check the U box on the map to clear out the commercial / civilian clutter and wait and watch when he's supposed to be traveling? Any way to tell / get notices about a set of planes (the different planes used by potus) when they are in motion?

While I realize this is all fun / interesting to most, I can imagine the government understandably doesn't want it to be easy to track POTUS for security reasons

THANKS!

 

Hey Mike,
Let me see if I can address some of this. First off, wikipedia has a good overview of transponder interrogation modes. "Mode S" and "ICAO 24-bit address" are good sections to read through.

Chances are good that your "little jet" was a TIS-B shadow of AF1. Just overlapping targets of the same aircraft, generated via different systems, so that more people can see the target no matter what system they're using. That's why it disappears and reappears.

As far as following planes, click on the history tab to see data for that specific aircraft. You can swap in any ICAO hex (like ae4ae6) into the ADSBx URL to see what data they might have for the aircraft registered with that hex. If ADSB tracking is proving to be a serious security issue for potus, they've probably got bigger issues...

 

thanks. Does ADSBExchange let you get alerts when certain aircraft show up in the system / file a flight plan, etc? And is there a list of 'interesting' plane IDs people have developed to know to watch? The typical planes used as AF1, AF2, etc? I am starting to 'learn' the state police helicopters numbers here / it's cute to see their flight tracks - over Morristown airport before potus visits, etc.

 

I don't know too much about alerts- there are several threads in this forum related to "alerts" or "notifications" that may be helpful. Flight plans are a separate data set from ADS-B.

There's many many lists of "interesting" aircraft out there. For the civil database, the FAA is probably your one stop shop. For military, things get a little more difficult. If I personally was looking for AF1, I'd start with the specific USAF group and dig from there. Not trying to be obtuse, but there's tens of thousands of airframes in the US military alone... gotta use what you already know to filter through the data a little bit.

 

Btw, we're neighbors of a sort- I'm just over in Brooklyn. Drop me a DM if you have questions about the region specifically

 

'questions about the region specifically' / obtuse...

obtuse is where I usually wind up with my overthinking of things. You just touched on one of the things I've wondered about all this 'feeding'.

I have a friend, he owns a plane. I have flightaware send me alerts - I get alerts when he files a flight plan. and when he's up in the air / arrived, etc.

Some of that is based on ADS-B, some (filght plan filing) is different, as you say.

My thing,when I first recently learned about setting up a feeder, etc... the fact that flightaware, flightradar24, etc, etc all are 'competing' for our data seems 'weird'? the info has a 'public good' related to it? I was thinking there was a central database (run by the FAA maybe?) that everyone feeds into. Then flight aware, and others get to use that data / maybe pay for access for the data for their business model.

Surprised that's not the case. (I even emailed the FAA and a guy there said they have their own ADS-B receivers all over and don't rely at all on amateur feeders. admittedly, would you want to fly if the plane's safety was relying on a bunch of raspberry pis in people's bedrooms? (and yeah, I likely don't grasp the whole picture of ADS-B and the safety part of things).

Just seems weird that there's all these websites, competing for feeders data (although I like being wanted : ) and making a business out of free info (although in my example at the top - flight aware is likely tapping into an FAA? database of flight plans.

Don't mind my rambling.

So what's your motiviation / thinking / use of a feeder in your house / how do you use the ADS-B website?

For me, i see a plane overhead, I click on the https://tar1090.adsbexchange.com/ shortcut on my phone and see what type that is. Not much more than that. (mostly because of ignorance of other things it can offer / I can do with it). I realize I don't need to feed for that access.

I feed Flightaware (and get the enterprise account, but have no use for that... I just like getting things for free even if I don't need them). I only set this up a couple / few weeks ago so I have to see who else I am feeding and what I can get for that. And I am a ham (on paper... I haven't been on the air in years.... I got my license when I was 16 (42 years? ago) 'cause some guys showed me their 2 meter radios with 'autopatch'... phone in the car! Cell phones kinda eliminated the benefit of autopatch.

What website(s) do you feed? What perks do you get?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_surveillance_radar lots of fun info out there.

I only feed ADSBx, because FlightAware, Flightradar24, etc will actively sensor my own feeder's data to block/anonymize anyone who pays those companies enough money. In exchange for a useless-to-me service no less

As far as I'm concerned, the categories of "interesting aircraft" and "would be blocked on FlightAware" are pretty much 1:1. This of course also includes your AF1-seeking.

There's benefits/extra data access/whatever associated with feeding ADSBx, much like there is with other sites. I'm sure that info is on the website somewhere. For me it's that I want finer coverage in my area, and I need that coverage to be uncensored. And the only real way for me to get that is through a co-op site like ADSBx.

 

ASDBx doesn't have fake freebies like FlightAware, no fake enterprise accounts, no blocking, and no filtering. ADSBx doesn't obfuscate the data we sent back to your feeder, or the data we display. If that isn't enough, then ..

ADSBx supports the United Nations, various Search and Rescue, Civil Air Patrol (CAP), fire fighting, investigative journalists, OCCRP, Dictator Alert, and many more independent apps for no cost. We support OpenADSB on iOS, and ADSB Flight Tracker on Android. We've partnered with C4ADS to track arms trafficking, smuggling, and every form of international crime. We support pilot awareness apps, like AvTraffic.

There are many more, if you want a full list someday. Here are links from those mentioned above.

https://avtraffic.com/
http://openadsbapp.com/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=CodingRealLife
https://dictatoralert.org/
https://www.occrp.org/en
https://c4ads.org/

There are plenty more apps/efforts we've supported over the years and we will continue to support even more as much as we can.

@wiedehopf (and others) spends lot's of time improving ADSBx servers and decoding. Tar1090 UI is his genius as well. ( https://globe.adsbexchange.com/ )

None of commercial sites would support these apps or these people without being paid millions in fees.

Feeding is easy. Setup can be done on the FlightAware image or you can start with a base Raspbian Lite.

ADSBx doesn't offer gimmicks to hide what we do with the data.