FlightAware:
I started out feeding FlightAware and will continue to do so. As stated before they are on top of their software. They are open to helping people get a start such as purchasing PlanePlotter licenses when needed. They invest in their feeders not just use them. The community is honestly one of the most technical and helpful of any of the other sites. The end user data and services are IMO by far the most featureful of any other site.
PlaneFinder:
I feed them and see no reason to stop. I like their polar distribution charts which are a great feature I wish FlightAware would incorporate into their site. The web sites layout is modern and really really easy to view with information readily available and their playback feature is a really cool feature as well. (On a side note one of my biggest complaints about FlightAware is viewing flights. The layout seems so compressed and really bland to me as opposed the Plane Finders…) Also their community seems courteous and helpful from what I have seen.
ADS-B Exchange:
Kind of a bandwidth hog at the moment but it’s the new kid on the block offering some “interesting” data. Doesn’t offer tons of data on flights but have found flights to mark as interesting on my own installation of VRS. Kind of neat seeing a plane circle around the Akron area for a few days straight the other week and finding out it was the DOJ.
FR24:
Never fed them, never will… They seem full of themselves on their forums and the fact with their post announcing the release of their software supporting MLAT they seem to be forcing their version of dump1090 using a proprietary data format upon people basically straight up stating that other versions are inferior and send nothing but bad data. IMO this is a push to make it harder to share data openly with aggregate sites other than theirs.
In efforts to improve data quality we have decided that we need to unify the decoding software on all our platforms and receivers. We’ve suffered from bad data for a long time and I think every one has seen an aircraft jumping or being shown where they weren’t supposed to be.
Why because no other version of dump1090 feeds proper data?
To lazy to put in place some checks on their end maybe?
The package provides everything required to run the decoder software, including modified dump1090 utility which is forked from Malcolm Robb’s branch but has several improvements for FR24 MLAT. It may be incompatible with other MLAT software if you use some.
Why so those wishing to share data with other sites are forced to jump through nearly impossible if not impossible to reach hoops so they can?