In addition to flight search and the live map, they also offer an Augmented Reality function that lets you point your phone at a plane, and it will show you details on what flight it is, where it’s going, and so on. Their apps are available for purchase on iOS and Android devices, as well as a desktop app for Mac. Their website gets more than 4 million unique visitors a month, and have more than 3 million apps downloaded. The entire operation has been self-financed from advertisements on the web version, and from downloads of their mobile and desktop apps. In the U.S., Flightradar24 is able to grab data from the FAA with a five minute delay, giving them complete coverage of the US and Canada. Today they have over 1000+ ADS-B devices feeding data into Flightradar24, of which 90% are owned by hobbyists. This uses Google Earth to show what the pilot is seeing in real time. Since then, they’ve been adding on features to the web version, like the Cockpit View, which you can toggle after selecting a flight. Things really took off due to extensive media coverage around the time for the Icelandic ash cloud,” says Lindahl. “The site started attracting a lot of visitors and more and more people around Europe with ADS-B equipment volunteered to feed. Mikael Robertsson and Olov Lindberg bought ADS-B receivers/antennas (surveillance devices for tracking aircraft) and put them up on their houses in the Stockholm area for their own enjoyment. But I had no idea it was based out of the region – Flightradar24 was started in 2006 by a few aviation enthusiasts in Stockholm.ĬEO Fredrik Lindahl tells us at first Flightradar24 was just a hobby project. Zooming in on London, for example, you wonder how there isn’t one plane crash a week. The service allows you to see an map of live flights, and by clicking on each individual plane you can see which flight and airline it is, the route it has taken, and see deeper data like altitude, speed, and squawk. Project Loon is a subsidiary of Google owners, Alphabet and originally began testing the idea in 2011.If you’re like me, Flightradar24 is one of those awesome websites you just accidentally end up on every now and then. An inflated Project Loon Balloon (Source: Loon) The Side panels protect the balloon from the wind as it is filled with lift gas and positioned for launch.Īfter 100 days the balloons return to earth in a controlled descent under a parachute. The Balloons are launched using a custom-built Autolauncher designed to launch Loon balloons safely. A Project Loon Autolauncher (Source: Loon) The solar panels power the equipment during daylight and also charge a battery for operation during dark hours. The electronic equipment is designed to be ultra-efficient and is powered by solar energy. They aren’t static but are constantly moving with the winds and the project has a system which is constantly learning how to improve the choreography of the balloons. Diagram showing Project Loon Balloon (Source: Loon) Made from polyethylene, the balloons are about the size of a tennis court and generally sit wind layers in the upper atmosphere creating a stable platform for delivering the data network. The balloons are designed to float up to 20km above the earth for around 100 days at a time carrying a connectivity base station to bring an LTE (4G) signal to remote areas. Looking at flight tracking websites like FlightRadar24 at the moment means you often see things you don’t notice, or pay attention too, normally including a bunch of yellow balls floating around over South America and Africa.īut they aren’t UFO’s they are Balloons that are part of Project Loon, a project that uses “audacious technologies” to connect people across the globe.
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