First off I am relatively new to this site. So I spotted this aircraft circling the protest currently happening in Los Angeles but the only information it has is an indent: ~298FDD I'm pretty certain it's an LAPD aircraft but am just curious why it is not showing more information and what exactly it is. I've also attached a screenshot.
That's not an ident. It's the pseudo hex code displayed because it has no ident. It was a radar target rebroadcast by ATC via TIS-B. Impossible to determine the type of aircraft unless you have non TIS-B data.
Could I ask where this information comes from? It sounds like it's not actually a signal coming from the aircraft and being picked up by a user's receiver? Is it coming from some government API? This is something I've been wondering about this site in general. Is it all crowdsourced through enthusiast receivers or is it supplemented by some public API?
That aircraft's icon and lack of information is very interesting for one reason. In the last year this type of icon and listing has appeared have grown exponentially in the Hempstead, Spring, Conroe, Huntsville, Navasota and the area North of Houston. They are everywhere! My brief research suggests they are some type of military aircraft, though one day I was watching one when its icon change, a tail number appeared and it turned out to be a Cessna 172. One day I counted more than 20 of them out of the airport in Navasota, TX.
