Just for context, 60,000 ‘other’ aircraft per day is approximately 42 new aircraft per minute for every minute of the day continuously. It should be immediately obvious that this is completely implausible. The entire US sees a maximum of approximately 50,000 flights in a day and the Eurocontrol region sees approximately 35-40,000. That’s flights, not unique aircraft which is what is counted by FA’s stats so the number of unique aircraft will be lower than those figures as short haul flights will make multiple trips per day.
The only way to get a figure that high is if bogus data is being generated somehow. I would bet that it’s over enthusiastic error correction producing non-existent aircraft.
As an old software developer, I think an error correction software function would show up in many more systems, and not reappear after reboots, configuration changes, or human error. This feels like a specific kind of “noise” generator built to take advantage of how Dump1090 versions parse the input signals. With some knowledge by digging into the Dump1090 code, one could create pseudo “Other” aircraft data with enough resolution in the data to create the high level results. Spoofing code is unfortunately not that difficult. Guessing The “OtherGenerator” could bypass Dump1090 entirely and just shove messages into the 30005 port of Piaware or whatever for forwarding onto Flightaware.com or other group.
The message is just a bunch of bits, containing specific things to trigger the “Other” identity. My guess, This is almost entirely single message data, not a coherent string of messages with these “Other” planes as they traverse the local receiver area. Anyone into reading C code to see the criteria for “Other” messages to be accepted and forwarded?
Lets assume the Ohio State University has a real receiver system. What stops some individual to create a new software program to send port 30005 pseudo “Other” messages. It would not even have to be on the same cpu/system. Just thinking as I type.
I concur to remove the “Other” aircraft from the ranking calculation. The system has a weakness/flaw and FlightAware can and should do better.
But then the FlightAware’s CEO’s second cousin on mom’s side, sister-in-law’s husband will not get his giggles when he sees how he is spoofing the system. Makes you wonder why he stopped at only 100,000 or so extra bullcrap Others. The nearly round average of Others implies this is an intentional fake Other generator system.
Tolerating this is inexcusable. Shut this crap down please Flightaware
It is stated as “100 km away”. But if you look on the map it’s in the middle of nowhere.
There is absolutely nothing, and surely not an ADS-B receiver:
And also that one should be questioned. At least it is not counting anything. The site says it’s just 400 km away, but it’s location is set to the opposite of the world.
Installed 3 days ago.
And that one. La Guardia as location, but no ADS-B?
None of that is really necessary. All you have to do is switch on 2 bit error correction (the -aggressive flag on dump1090, which also is more permissive with error checking) or the -f 2 and -x options on the airspy decoder and you will get thousands of bogus messages.
The error correction for mode-s and ads-b is not very robust so it’s quite easy to get a lot of false data if the configuration is done in a certain way. This isn’t really too much of a problem if you are just looking locally, but if you are sharing the data and want to actually track the data generated then you get anomalous results as mentioned here.
If you set up the decoder properly then this problem goes away - airspy_adsb has a whitelist function that will get rid of most false messages as they are effectively random hex ids that only occur once for example.
I think it’s easy to set it up that way by mistake, just from misunderstanding the configuration options - people see things like “2 bit error correction” or “dx mode” and enable it because they think it will help, when in fact there’s not really any good reason to use it.
He/She has two stations, and looking at both, the Lat/Lon numbers look like they are swapped. Seems like an Oops moment when configuring the site initially. Don’t think MLAT will be working reliably at the site.
Hopefully they will take note of the details in your message and make an effort to correct the configuration. Always learning. Let’s hope they are up to it.
The fact that the top person has been like it for many months and the next two in the leaderboard are attributing all these ‘other’ aircraft down to his location suggests to me that they’re quite happy with it as it is.
Hence why we’re asking FA to exclude ‘other’ aircraft from the leaderboard.
Hi all. We understand your frustration. The Other positions were relevant years ago when the leaderboard was created, but less so now. We have a ticket in our backlog to exclude Other from the ranking algorithm, but have been unable to get to it due to other priorities.
Thank you Eric for your feedback. We will be waiting anxiously for the ticket implementation for the removal of “other” from the ranking calculation. Bravo!
Thank you for responding Eric, I had this confirmed in ticket #849115 which I logged with FA support a couple of days ago. Their reply is word for word, the same as yours
Hopefully this can be given a higher priority now.
Excluding “Other” planes from the rankings is a huge win. Now we just have to figure out what to do about the people who pull the ole Geography Cheat by getting big numbers just because they happen to live under the busiest flight paths on the planet, and not because they actually put any time or effort into the hobby. This “other” stuff only benefits a few outliers, the people getting an unfair advantage because of their geography affects tons of trackers.
… or maybe we’ll only focus on eliminating the unfair stuff that benefits others, and not the unfair stuff that benefits us
If that’s a dig at me then I suggest you look at my post history here and see all the effort I’ve put into building my station and making it the best I possibly can. It’s no secret that I’m in one of the best locations in the UK for spotting traffic but that doesn’t mean I haven’t made a serious effort to get the best possible receiver up in the air.
/edited to add a link to the history of threads I’ve started which gives a brief insight into how my receiver has developed over the years. It’s interesting to note that I first raised this subject in 2020.
No, not a dig at all. You seem to have put a bunch of time and effort into your setup. Lots of people pulling down big numbers seem to be serious about the hobby and live under the busiest flight paths on the planet. This thread just prompted me to think about the ways that these silly rankings can be fair and unfair, and I guess I just realized that fairness is an impossible goal. A well-thought-out setup under a busy flight path will do tons better than a well-thought-out setup in the middle of Montana. Without the geography cheat, the most well-thought-out setups in the world wouldn’t do diddly in the rankings. Kinda puts it in perspective for me any time I start to think the rankings mean something.
"Geography Cheat’ is an interesting opinion. Those tuned in to the hobby know that there is no automatic success driven exclusively by a “cheat” location. Just throwing a box into the attic with a stick attached won’t cut it, even in a “cheat” location.
But you agree that location matters immensely, right? I bet a box in the attic in London would get you more planes than a fantastic outdoor setup in Saskatoon. I guess cheating implies premeditation… maybe I’ll feel better about my geographic advantage if I call it “a geographic advantage that I happen to have that a lot of people don’t have, which lets me beat similar or even better setups in less dense areas”? Either way, it feels like it makes the rankings a lot more hollow to me when I think about the people out there doing the exact same thing, in a worse location, and therefore not getting as many planes.
Kinda makes the numbers seem more hollow once you realize you were “born on 3rd base”. Or maybe its just me lol.
