Hi all. I’ve been a FlightAware feeder since 2022, and nothing has changed with my setup. I check my feeder stats every day to make sure that everything continues to work correctly. However, over the last few weeks, my ‘Highest ranking in last 30 days’ has dropped substantially compared to generally over the last two years. It drops almost every day, despite the fact that the numbers of aircraft tracked each day is fairly constant, along with the number of positions recorded. Tonight, I noticed that the ‘User last online’ field shows “21 days ago”. It would normally be showing hours or even minutes. The host computer is on and connected 24/7. The ‘Feeder check in’ continues to show correctly at “3 minutes ago”
I also monitor distance using Virtual Radar and SkyAware with the same data from my Pi setup, and again, nothing has changed. The distance I can ‘see’ out to, and the number of aircraft that become visible at that distance, remains fairly constant, and unchanged.
So can anyone cleverer than me at this suggest why the stats keep dropping, and how ‘User last online’ is assessed, and why it thinks that for me, this was 21 days ago ?
Same here; I am not sure how long the last online option has been broken for, but I’ve been noticing a ton of problems after the new log-in phase that they pushed out within the last week or so with the emails. My ranks haven’t dropped, but my profile is pretty broken, as well as my phone number just getting deleted entirely off settings. Not sure what is going on yet; haven’t heard back from support at all.
Hmmm. I’m still logged in and it knows that I am as it is still taking check-ins from my feed. It knows that my system is running and my MLAT is synchronised and that I am connected to FlightAware. I would like to understand how that ‘User last online’ parameter is derived, given that my feed clearly IS online, and that I interact with it multiple times during the day. I am reluctant to log out as I seem to recall last time, I had real trouble logging back in, and had to change the password. I do restart the host computer from time to time - perhaps once every couple of weeks, but fundamentally, its on 24/7. When I bring my FlightAware / stats back up after a reboot, it is logged in without me doing anything. I haven’t restarted the Pi thats hosting the station receiver recently. I don’t think that is likely to have any effect on this current ‘problem’, but maybe I should …
Interestingly, having restarted my computer, the ‘user last online’ field has disappeared completely, so I guess admin have removed it for whatever reason. I never really understood what it meant anyway … However, my stats continue to drop for no reason that I can readily discern, so maybe there’s tons and tons of new feeds coming online suddenly that all perform better than my station
‘Rank’, ‘Rank Total’ and ‘Highest User Ranking in Last 30 Days’ - which is one that I’ve never understood anyway.
As to airlines changing their timetables, yes, I am aware and that this can affect the amount of traffic, but I do check daily on the number of aircraft tracked and the amount of messages received. Obviously, there are fluctuations, but all of the graphs for daily and monthly and long term reporting are substantially flat. I live directly under the main north south mid to high level corridor in the UK, and my antenna is high and completely in the clear. I ‘see’ pretty much in every direction, and have Gatwick, Heathrow, London City, Stanstead, Luton, Bristol, East Midlands, Birmingham all around me, so traffic is substantial and constant between early morning and late evening. I see traffic in all of the main corridors across the UK out to 220 NM.
I know people on here say that you shouldn’t obsess over rankings, but I’ve always found it to be a useful way of assessing overall, and continued, station performance. I strive to make the station work as well as I can, and find it a bit dis-spiriting when the performance seems to be dropping without any clear reason why.
I’ve never really found how the rankings are derived to be clear. I see people with far lower figures than mine, but much higher up the rankings, apparently because they’ve recorded a few more aircraft than me. I would have thought that the number of data points that the station is feeding into the network would have held a higher priority than number of aircraft, but as I said, I really don’t understand how the rankings are generated anyway …
