Aircraft live tracker (worldwide)

[MadMuz]

A mate sent me this, it is a tracker for airplanes world wide. If you put the cursor over a plane, it will tell you what plane it is, if you click on a plane, it shows details on the left panel of window. You will notice that all of the planes are moving as this is real time. Makes you wonder how any airliners can "go missing"?

[birdy]

Amazn............. F***n amazn. Boggles the mind wen you get that perspective.???And humans are crappn themselves coz a few cows fartn are supposedly go,n to warm the planet.Yeh, rite. >

[MadMuz]

That"s right Birdy.... I had been told ages ago that any given time there is upwards of 5000 airliners in the air (or lining up or taxying in) but when you can"t see England or france for the splattering of flights on the site, it really makes the eyes pop!

[eigyro]

The tracker just provides the information from the plane"s transponder on the ADS-B system. Switch off the transponder and you are invisible.

[icarter]

That"s right but the question is - why can a commercial passenger aircraft turn the transponder off?

[MadMuz]

I think it might have been Waddles that said there are several tracking devices on the big sky busses.... the main transponders and radios, but evidently there are a few that the pilot cant turn off from the **** pit

[eigyro]

The engine and systems reporting is by ACARS via satellite. The Malaysian guys pulled the breaker on this also.The only reason we know which ocean its in is because they apparently didn"t know to turn off the satellite comms system that carries the ACARS information.All electrical systems require fuses/circuit breakers to prevent fire in the event of a circuit overload.Most if not all of those must be accessible to the pilot.I have an old 707 cockpit I play with, and everything is fused and accessible.I assume the same, or similar, applies to modern cockpits.

[eigyro]

When the transponder is turned off, the plane becomes invisible to secondary radar,the type that picks up the planes ID, position height and speed information.It is still visible to primary radar as an unidentified dot on the scope, if within range.Primary radar has a much shorter range than secondary radar.The ADS-B signal operates beyond primary or secondary radar range, probably via satellite,although there is a HF text facility as well, although I don"t think that is used for ADS-B information.

[MadMuz]

Sounds like chinese to me ??? They cant turn off the passengers mobile phones and laptops, I always leave mine on, on a plane

[gbw]

"Makes you wonder how any airliners can "go missing"? "You will find that the aircraft disappear about 150 miles off the coast, as there are no receivers in the ocean. If you get the paid version, it apparently identifies each plane and gives info about the flight you click on. A Google search will give the same information. Also you can become a receiver and your computer sends info to flight radar, making it more accurate. When M17 disappeared, a bloke used Flight Radar to track its flight and height change which subsequently proved very accurate.There is a Rolls Royce vid on Youtube showing the development of their latest engine, very clever stuff, forming turbine blades etc.. And then into

[chook]

Graham whats got me intrigued is that Australia has not mentioned anything about our over the horizon radar (you know that little Aussie invention which can detect yank stealth aircraft) which monitors our airspace north and obviously out to Christmas and Cocos islands.It"s all politics and bullsh1t.It was reported that Australia alone spent over $1million a day on aircraft, ships and maintenance on that little facade.Regards....Chook.

[MadMuz]

I thought everyone knew that flight370 was shot down for getting too close to N Kor ea, but because it fell in the ocean between china and Krea they could get people to look elsewhere (off Aus coast) while they cleaned up? If the world payed as much attention as they are in the ukrane, N K have very itchy trigger fingers and nuke boms.... that is why it was covered up and why the relatives are so cranky, because they know what happened and where. :You can get info with this version, hover the cursor over a plane it tells you its number, click it and it tells you info on keft

[MadMuz]

Ckooky, not to mention that satellites have such good magnification, "back in the office" they can do the crossword in the newspaper while you are reading it

[chook]

Murray a couple of things - MH370 went in at night so infra red or radar was the go.I still don"t buy that an aircraft of that size runs out of fuel and lands gently in the ocean without causing some debris. The wings alone were giant flotation tanks as they were empty - apparently?There is more to this than they are letting on.Regards..........Chook.

[tonydenton]

chook , do you think it strange that on the last mh flight that was apparently shot down that they were told to reduce altitude by 2000 ft. wouldn"t all the flights be set with their altitudes for that flight. ??? I thought that was strange. bloody all sad as thou obviously.