I know this question has appeared many times on the forum. However, I still don’t understand how the site ranks users with Flight Feeders (either those from FA or home built).
Please refer to the referenced screen grab. I am “rhimbo” on the image, 6th down from the top. I can’t figure out which column (or columns if some combination of weighted categories) is used to calculate rank.
Google KI gave me this summary of the FA documentation:
" FlightAware’s ADS-B receiver rankings are determined by the number of unique aircraft a receiver tracks and contributes to FlightAware’s data over the last 30 days. The ranking is based on a combination of ADS-B, MLAT, and UAT aircraft, but excludes “Other” aircraft from the calculation. FlightAware recently updated their ranking system, removing “Other” aircraft as a factor in the rankings, though their data is still displayed"
And the announcement that “other” has been removed from calculation due to misusage:
ADS-B Statistics Ranking Update
So in your example the columns 4, 6, and 8 are used, these show the number of unique aircraft.
Ah, OK; thank you. I see that column 8 is sparse in my case.
I was just curious. I’m not trying to climb higher in the rankings.
“the last 30 days” deserves some clarification. The early end of the 30 days is at midnight (I haven’t bothered to figure out which timezone midnight, but that doesn’t matter). The late end of the 30 days, is the current time of the current day. That’s why rankings keep changing. Peak flight times are generally during daylight hours all over the world, so since the beginning and end time of day are not in sync, there’s a daily pulse of rankings changing throughout the day. This will often result in your station not even appearing on the listing. The explanation for your station not appearing has been explained in comments that it may be because your ranking is changing. Well, all rankings are always changing because of these unequal endpoints. In my opinion, the software should be changed so that either both endpoints use the current hour, or they both use midnight. Either change would result in more consistent results and a more meaningful ranking.
As far as i know the TZ of the Flightaware HQ
It’s calculated on UTC Time so GMT time is the moment that the calculation is made.
From the stats page:
NOTE: Hourly data is reported in the site’s local time. Daily data is reported in UTC time.
Thanks for the confirmation. That was my assumption.
