In the past few weeks looking at KSEA track logs, I’ve noticed that near the airport “Reporting Facility” has switched from our feeder ADS-B data (for planes so equipped) to something called “Airport Surveillance”.
Is this Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X (ASDE-X) radar, i.e. ground radar meant for taxiing in bad weather?
Why was this change made?
I’ve always found it kinda neat when looking at track logs to see my alias next to one of the track points.
MLAT points have always been replaced with “Seattle Center” (which I presumes means TRACON) ones for the obvious reason that MLAT data is not very precise. But why switch from ADS-B?
It’s a mix of ASDE-X and ASSC, depending on the system deployed in the area. Where it’s lower latency than your ADS-B site you’ll see it preempting, since we take the quicker reported positions.
In the specific case of KSEA, did the FAA just start providing the ASDE-X / ASSC data on or around July 13th or did they improve their latency enough (or did ours worsen) to pop them ahead of the ADS-B feeders on that date?
Just trying to understand the direct cause of the change specifically for KSEA.
We added the airport surveillance to production around that date.
Still working out how to integrate the on-surface data into the site. Available for commercial customers today in a couple products (feed, visualization, predictions).
