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What is flying above you?

Mitakuye Oyasin

Mitakuye Oyasin

Established member
If you have ever heard the sounds of an airplane or jet above you and wondered what it was, there is a cool app that maps and details most civilian and some military flight info. The app is free and can be found here: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/

By pressing the "U" button at the top you can filter out civilian aircraft and look at only military flights. At least the ones they allow you to see. There is a ton of functionality to this app I have not even discovered yet, but it is fun to play with to see what is flying overhead in my neck of the woods, or elsewhere in the world.

Give it a whirl for yourself, it is pretty fun. It is also insane to think about all the planes in the air at any given time of the day or night and all the humans who are floating above us at any given moment. ;-)
 
Strange flights this week. Twice (2 separate days) caught a U2 flying above California at more than 60,000 feet with a NASA tag on it. Also there have been a flurry of flights in Nevada from Las Vegas to Nellis Air Force Base (aka Area 51) under the JANET name. JANET stands for Just Another Non Existent Terminal and was a joke made by the military when the public started noticing the mystery flights from Las Vegas Airport going and coming from the nearby Air Base. Usually you will be lucky to see one of two JANET flights per week, but recently there have been dozens a day, from all parts of the Air Base. Something is going on there.

On the non military side of the flight tracker I find it funny that experimental aircraft design companies like Rutan (won X prize) have a plane icon that looks like a Romulan War Bird from Star Trek. Rutan designs often have the longest wing on the rear of the aircraft and the shorter wing upfront, backwards from most commercial aircraft.

Just some observations from using the app. If anyone else plays around with this flight tracking app for themselves, maybe drop some cool stuff you find.
 
Anyone else using this flight tracker app or just me? I really find it fascinating to see what is flying around me. The recent SoCal fires were interesting to watch from a flight perspective.
 
I checked it out. It is crazy just the sheer number of planes up there. I also found it to be rather relaxing just watching the planes fly around the screen, occasionally clicking on one from time to time. I saved it to my favorites and will continue to check it out from time to time.

Thanks for sharing the app Mitakuye Oyasin!
 
My pleasure. Yes it can be relaxing just watching the icons move around. Sort of like watching jellyfish slowly rising to and falling from the surface, very meditative. If you select the U at the top you can toggle between Civilian flights and Military flights, which is often very revealing. It has also been fun to track the incoming and outgoing flights of friends who have visited from both in and out of state. I am still very much a novice with this software, but it is powerful fun.
 


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