Will data from my house help?

I am considering putting together an ADS-B receiver. My house is in Chicago underneath one of the busiest landing paths in the world, 10 miles east of ORD, with line of sight views to planes coming into three different runways. My question is: at this close proximity will ADS-B data improve the tracking accuracy of of O’Hare flights, or will it constantly be superseded by data from the airport?

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Your question is commendable, but misguided.
Build a receiving station because:

  • you have an interest in aircraft
  • you have an interest in radio
  • you have an interest in RPi’s
  • you like spending time on your roof
  • your bored

In your location, you could hardly fail to produce good stats, but do it for yourself.
When you stop enjoying it, find something else to do with your Pi!

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Any data will help, but check the coverage map

https://flightaware.com/adsb/coverage

There are a ton of feeders in the Chicago area.
As Gecko said, do it for fun.

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It’s nice to get actual real time data.

So having your own receiver is really the only way to do this.
(Having access to the local maps of another receiver also works)

But all the aggregation sites have quite some delay in their data.
FlightAware has quite a bit more than most others but all have it.

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Well said.

When I started this hobby 6 years ago, I was not aware of any tracking sites. I started it purely as local venture, using $9 dvb-t (black) plugged into Windows desktop with RTL1090 + adsbScope to decode & display map. I used a DIY antenna.

It was real fun seeing planes on my Windows computer in real-time, although the map of adsbScope is not as colorful as that of Skyview/dump1090

It was also great fun to experiment with diferrent DIY antennas.

It was almost after one year when I started feeding “tracking sites”, that also only intermittently.

It was another one year when I started using RPi. It was another fun to learn and play with Linux.

So setup your receiver and have fun.

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Plus with the help with the fine folks who posted above, you cant go wrong.

1 Like