'Other' again

@obj or @eric1tran

These all look a little dodgy don’t they? The first two definitely are, claiming to see over 25,000 ‘other’ aircraft per day.

Is anything ever going to be done about this?

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Same old song, seems every year the “old” vinyl LP is stuck.

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It’s ridiculous. If you hover over the stats for that first one, this is what you get.

Time for the Fa staff to check it (again)

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Their rank totals make no sense relative to the real world! Their 1090 Mode-S daily avg is the same as mine but the 1090 mode-S “Other” is many thousands in a daily average. Smells like HS is Horse-S.

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It sure would be super if the staff could take a look. That said, this task – i.e., fraud/anomoly detection – could all, so easily, be automated; what with the treasure trove of historical event/time-series data upon which these folks are sitting. They just don’t care.

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The easiest way to stop this behaviour is to stop the pissing contest.

The “highest No reported” has everything to do with which airport you live next to and almost nothing to do with the time/effort/expence you have invested in your station(s).

If there must be a pissing contest, then a better metric might be “No. of unique aircraft reported” - this would reward the remote/difficult/expensive sites.

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I see the top one is actually reporting over 100,000 ‘other’ aircraft per day.

The second is reporting over 50,000 ‘other’ aircraft per day.

Or to count ADS-B/UAT, the real received messages.

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I have already implemented your excellent suggestion.

For last many years, I have never seen my ranking. As a result, my blood does not boil, and my Blood Pressure remains normal.

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This is the way. If you’re fixated on your rankings, it’s inherently not “fair” when people on the eastern seaboard and in Europe can, with almost 0 time, money, or knowledge invested, pull down huge numbers of planes just because of their location, while so many others have to spend countless hours testing setups, buying big antennas, etc, for relatively small numbers.

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I don’t care about rankings.
Even without the fake “other” values it mostly depends on your location, the environment and the traffic you have in your area.

A guy in the middle of nowhere can have the perfect receiver setup, he will never achieve the same result like a simple out-of-the-box receiver with a stupid 5 bucks antenna of somebody living in a flat area with either a major airport aside or having a major traffic route above (or both in best case)

I am getting lots of traffic passing the middle Germany while the same setup would miss them if my receiver would be 300 miles more north or more south.

So who cares?

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I see the UK now has a new #1, someone allegedly seeing around 2,000 ‘other’ aircraft per day and the #1 in the world is now reporting over 110,000 ‘other’ aircraft per day.

Does anyone at FA care about these rogues @obj / @eric1tran ?

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Doesn’t appear they give a “Wing flap”. #1 at the University must have found a way to AI generate "other’ traffic.

The location affords the feeder and allows the ranking. Location is in central CT?USA…In the center of the Boston-New York City corridor. More than willing to shear what my feeder and antenna specifications are. You just need to ask rather than suspect something in error. Just an aviation enthusiast like all of you.

What, you actually see 60,000 ‘other’ aircraft per day do you?

The closet other FA receivers near you see a hundred at most. What are these 60,000 aircraft you spot every single day that nobody else does?

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Getting out of the specifics of any one individual’s case and taking a step back… Just my two cents on this overall.

In my opinion, I think excluding “Other Aircraft” from the ranking calculation would be the best solution to this situation. Just list it on the Stats UI if it’s deemed as being of value to FA or the Community, or drop it completely. It appears that the “Other” category is not too difficult to manipulate/“Trade” Mode-S Aircraft for Other Aircraft by a ‘bad actor’, is being rewarded in the ranking system, and I suspect that might be what is happening in some cases of what appear to be outlandish user statistics. I’ve sat and stared more than a few times wondering how some sites could be reporting such high numbers.

I personally like the rankings as it provides me another metric that is easy to watch/monitor the performance of my site, but when it is a simple change to balloon the “Other” stats (and subsequently a user’s rank - very quickly) I question the value when we might have feeders among us that to appear to want to ‘win’ at all costs. That comment isn’t directed at anyone in particular.

Again, just my two cents on the topic and perhaps fuel for thought.

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Just the decoder talking to the SDR and its settings is the most relevant part.
Go ahead and post those, someone will probably be able to point out what’s producing the ‘other’ aircraft.

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Yup, it’s been suggested many times before and I agree, that would be the best solution.

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I deliberately didn’t respond to this but now I’m going to.

Yes, I know how important location is. I’m situated in what is almost certainly the best location for tracking aircraft in this country and up until very recently, I’ve held the #1 spot for the UK on the FA leaderboard, and have been there for years. In the peak of summer, I’m regularly in the top 20 worldwide and have been as high as #12 in the world a couple of times so I know exactly what a good location can do. I’ve just been knocked off the #1 UK spot by someone reporting around 2,000 ‘other’ aircraft per day and looking at their location and the receivers near them, that’s just not possible.

Some people don’t care about the leaderboards but I do and to see people who are somehow artificially inflating their own figures (whether intentionally or not) is really frustrating.

I don’t believe it’s possible to see 60,000 ‘other’ aircraft per day as you’re reporting and it’s definitely not possible to see over 100,000 per day as the very top station in the leaderboard is reporting. The new UK #1 simply can’t be seeing 2,000 per day either because again, everyone near him is reporting around 100.

As @wiedehopf says, post your settings and I’m sure this can be sorted for you.

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