Why Most Planes Don't Need RADAR Tracking Any More

AKA - Transponders - Radars in da Skies For $100 you can build a home base station that will track aircraft out to hundreds of miles away, and the reason this is possible is the US requires aircraft operating at Major airports and high altitudes to broadcast their location and identity using ADS-B. This is a relatively recent requirement, but traditional primary RADAR hasn't been the main tracking mechanism for decades, transponders have been used to help track everyone, and the transponder began at the IFF system in world war II. There are a number of tracking sites - the one that I bought the hardware from is Flight Aware https://flightaware.com/live/ However I use ADSBExchange more often since they have some more tools https://www.adsbexchange.com/ Dump1090 is the software that makes this possible https://github.com/antirez/dump1090 PiAware is what I'm running: https://github.com/flightaware/piaware I bought my kit and other hardware from the flightaware store, partly because I could actually get a kit with the Raspberry Pi, which is in short supply right no. https://flightaware.store/ Follow me on Twitter for more updates: https://twitter.com/DJSnM I have a discord server where I regularly turn up: https://discord.gg/zStmKbM If you really like what I do you can support me directly through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/scottmanley