FlightAware is definitely king, but the maps of course aren’t very flexible, and not all the airplane tags are shown. Sometimes I want to have a closer look at the activity.
So does anyone here use payware flight trackers (specifically low-cost personal trackers)? I used Flight Explorer a couple of years ago and it was pretty good. The downside is they were kind of stingy on bandwidth and it looks like now they limit you to 10 hours of usage per month.
I’m not sure what else is out there.
Tim
Someone correct me if I am wrong (which I know you will), but I believe that a couple of the things you are requesting are in the works. I know that map zooming and possible mouse-overs for the aircraft. If you have other ideas, zip over to the “Feature Request” forum and put in there what you would like to see on FA (suggest you use the SEARCH feature at the top BEFORE you just go all crazy like and post an idea.)
BEWARE THE DAMI, JHEM, NEEDLE, CFIJAMES, and, uh…who did I leave out?
Why would anyone want to pay for a flight tracker for personal, non-professional use when you have FlightAware available for the cost of only clicking on an ad or two ever so often? Yes, there are some limitations but the FlightAware staff is working to overcome those. Just do a search of this forum and you’ll find out what they are doing.
(The sites you are talking about are called “paid sites,” not “payware.” Something “ware” (like spyware, vaporware, hardware) usually refers to either something you can touch (e.g. a CPU) or software (likes Internet Explorer or WordPerfect). However, if someone wants to point out that there really is a new term called payware, I’ll graciously get off my soap box.)
See. Told you. BEWARE THE DAMI!
The president!!! 
Your boss will here about this one and your pay check is gonna… [whistling sound].
"]payware py wr ]
noun
Definition:
commercial software: commercial software as opposed to freeware or shareware
I stand, or rather sit, corrected.