This is just a curiousity question and most directed at any FA staff who could respond.
Here is a description of the data sources ingested by FA and the processing engine for the data. It mentions receipt of HF positional data from ANSPs. I understand that HFDL data is not suitable for real-time tracking due to its data link latency and ambiguity that can exist in data presentation between HFDL and other sources like ADS-B. So I am assuming this HF data is used post-facto to refine/enrich the data received from other sources. Can you elaborate on how it is used in practice?
As someone who plays around with dumphfdl on the side, I sometimes take the track for a specific flight I have collected via HF and compare it with what FA reports for the same. I often find my data corresponds with ”gap in available coverage” or an estimated position on FA where the estimates can differ quite a bit from what my data shows.
Would it be beneficial to FA to harvest HFDL data from folks running dumphfdl to run through its analytic engine after the fact to fill in the gaps and improve the estimated tracks since it seems you may be using HF data already in some capacity? Maybe what I am asking is not feasible or scalable or maybe the effort vs. pay-off ratio for doing so does not compute. As I said at the start, I’m just curious.