AeroScope leverages a worldwide network of community-operated ADS-B receivers to provide comprehensive flight tracking coverage across six continents.
ADS-B coverage depends on ground-based receivers operated by aviation enthusiasts and community networks around the world. Each receiver can detect aircraft within approximately 200-300 nautical miles, depending on antenna height, local terrain, and atmospheric conditions. By aggregating data from thousands of receivers across multiple networks, AeroScope achieves broad global coverage with strong redundancy in populated areas.
Excellent coverage across the continental United States and southern Canada, driven by a dense network of community receivers and strong ADS-B adoption following the 2020 FAA mandate. Coverage is comprehensive in the eastern and western corridors, with some gaps in sparsely populated areas of the Mountain West and northern Canada.
Outstanding coverage across Western and Central Europe, Scandinavia, and the British Isles. The adsb.fi network has particularly strong coverage in Finland, Sweden, and Norway. Dense population centers across Germany, France, the UK, and the Benelux countries provide near-complete coverage. Eastern Europe has growing but less dense coverage.
Good coverage in Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, and coastal Australia. Growing coverage in India and China. Island nations across the Pacific have limited ground-based coverage, though space-based ADS-B via Aireon satellites provides ocean-area tracking for equipped aircraft at flight levels.
Moderate coverage in the Middle East (UAE, Israel, Turkey) and North Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa has limited coverage concentrated around major airports and population centers. Coverage is expanding as more enthusiasts contribute receivers to community networks in these regions.
Growing coverage in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Colombia. Urban areas and major airports have good coverage, while remote areas of the Amazon basin and Patagonia have limited ground-based receiver presence. The community network continues to expand across the continent.
Traditional ADS-B ground receivers cannot cover oceanic routes. However, space-based ADS-B through Aireon satellites on the Iridium NEXT constellation provides global coverage including transatlantic, transpacific, and polar routes. AeroScope focuses on ground-based coverage within receiver range of landmasses.
AeroScope uses a tiered source architecture with multi-source fusion confidence scoring. Primary sources provide the core data feed, extended sources add wider geographic reach, and optional paid sources fill remaining gaps.
A community-driven ADS-B network with roots in Finland. Known for particularly strong coverage across Scandinavia and Europe, with a growing global receiver network. Provides high-quality, low-latency data through a well-maintained infrastructure. Open and community-focused with no commercial filtering. This is AeroScope's primary data source with the highest confidence weight in the fusion algorithm.
A global ADS-B mirror network providing broad worldwide coverage. Aggregates data from community receivers across all continents. Serves as the second primary source, enabling cross-validation between adsb.fi and adsb.lol for spoof detection. When both sources agree on an aircraft's position, confidence scoring is elevated.
Provides wider radius coverage that supplements the primary sources. AeroScope queries airplanes.live with an expanded geographic bounding box, catching aircraft at the edges of the primary coverage area. Data from this source receives a moderate confidence weight and is fused with primary data when overlap exists.
An academic research network based at the University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland. OpenSky provides global coverage with historical data archives. AeroScope uses OpenSky as a global gap-filler and for cross-validation of aircraft positions reported by other sources.
For deployments requiring maximum coverage, AeroScope optionally supports ADS-B Exchange via the RapidAPI marketplace. This provides access to one of the largest unfiltered ADS-B networks — no military or government filtering. Configured via API key in the environment file. Data is fused with community sources using the same weighted confidence system.
When the same aircraft (matched by ICAO hex) appears in multiple sources, AeroScope computes a fused position using weighted averaging. Each source's weight is determined by: historical position accuracy, update latency, and coverage consistency for the aircraft's geographic region. An aircraft confirmed by 3+ sources with position agreement within 500 meters receives a confidence score above 95. Single-source aircraft receive proportionally lower confidence. This fusion approach also detects spoofing — if one source reports a position that disagrees with all others by more than 2 km, the outlier is flagged for signal integrity review.
Anyone can contribute to global ADS-B coverage by setting up their own receiver. It is surprisingly affordable and straightforward:
Total cost: approximately $40-140 depending on the components you choose. Many ready-to-go kits are available from retailers that include everything needed. Placement matters: the higher you can mount the antenna (rooftop, attic, upper floor window), the better your coverage radius will be. A well-placed antenna at 30 feet elevation can typically see aircraft out to 200+ nautical miles.
Once running, you can feed your data to community networks like adsb.fi, adsb.lol, and others, directly contributing to the global coverage that platforms like AeroScope depend on.