QUESTIONS, ANSWERED PLAINLY

Frequently asked questions

Everything people most often ask about how AeroScope works, what it can see, and where its honest limits are. Still stuck? Get in touch.

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The short version

AeroScope fuses 60+ public ADS-B feeds into a real-time, explainable picture of the aircraft over a point you choose, their identity, behaviour and signal integrity, and surfaces the few that deserve attention. It is observer-relative, torch-free and open. The detail is below.

Data and coverage

Where the information comes from

Where does AeroScope get its data?
From public volunteer ADS-B networks including adsb.fi, adsb.lol, airplanes.live and OpenSky, plus a satellite-ADS-B layer, hexdb.io for registry lookups and aviationweather.gov for weather. AeroScope operates no receivers of its own. Every source is listed on the data sources page.
Why does an aircraft disappear from the map?
Almost always a coverage gap rather than anything the aircraft did. Reception is line of sight, so aircraft drop out beyond receiver range, at low altitude behind terrain, and over oceans. See coverage.
How current is the data?
Positions refresh on a fast loop of about seven seconds, with client-side dead reckoning between fixes for continuous motion. It is near real time rather than instantaneous, because of latency between broadcast, republication and fetch.
Trust and limits

The questions worth asking of any tracker

Can I rely on AeroScope for anything safety critical?
No. It must never be used for air traffic control, navigation, separation or collision avoidance. It is not certified for operational aviation use and makes no completeness guarantee. See limitations.
Is AeroScope certified, and is there an SLA?
No. It holds no SOC 2, ISO 27001 or FedRAMP certification and does not claim any, and there is no contractual SLA. The security page lists only controls verifiable from the live service, and live health is on the status page.
Does a clean integrity check mean an aircraft is genuine?
No. It means nothing was detected. The checks catch broadcasts contradicting physics or their own metadata, but a well-constructed, physically plausible spoof can pass.
Who is accountable for this platform?
Muhammad Uzair, an independent researcher in the Department of Computer Science at COMSATS University Islamabad, ORCID 0009-0002-4104-2680. See about.
FAQ

AeroScope, frequently asked questions

What is AeroScope?
An observer-relative airspace-intelligence platform. It ingests aircraft positions from 60+ public ADS-B feeds: fuses and de-duplicates them, and presents a real-time, explainable view of the aircraft over a chosen point, identity, behaviour, signal integrity, and which ones warrant attention. It also publishes an open ADS-B anomaly-detection benchmark.
How do I see what is flying over my house?
Open the live map, set your location, and AeroScope shows the aircraft overhead with distance, bearing, identity and an attention score for each. No app or hardware required.
Does AeroScope use deep learning or reinforcement learning?
No. The anomaly layer is deliberately torch-free and built on established libraries. River, scikit-learn IsolationForest, pykalman, OpenAP, stumpy and PyOD, with consensus voting (at least two detectors must agree). There is no PyTorch and no reinforcement learning; an earlier RL prototype was retired.
How does it detect a spoofed or fake aircraft?
It validates each broadcast against its integrity fields (NIC/NACp/NACv/SIL), a Kalman normalised-innovation plausibility test, and self-consistency residuals (geometric-vs-barometric altitude, ground-speed-vs-Mach, track-vs-heading). Messages that contradict physics or their own metadata are flagged. See signal integrity.
Is the threat score an accusation?
No. It is a 0–100 attention-ranker that sorts a busy list, computed from eight transparent weighted factors, all shown. It tells you where to look first; it does not pass judgement. See threat scoring.
Can it detect drones?
It tracks drones that broadcast (FAA Remote ID and larger UAS) and flags low-and-slow behavioural candidates, but a fully silent consumer drone with no transponder cannot be seen by ADS-B alone. See drone detection for the honest breakdown.
Can it track military or stealth aircraft?
It surfaces military and state aircraft that broadcast ADS-B, using ICAO hex ranges, callsign patterns and pattern-of-life. It cannot see aircraft with the transponder off or under emissions control. See military aircraft tracking.
Where does the data come from?
Public ADS-B broadcasts on 1090 MHz republished by volunteer networks (adsb.fi, adsb.lol, airplanes.live, OpenSky) plus a satellite-ADS-B merge. 60+ feeds, de-duplicated by ICAO 24-bit address. See multi-source fusion.
Is there an open dataset I can cite?
Yes, the AeroScope ADS-B Anomaly Benchmark v1, CC-BY 4.0, with 38 documented columns pairing real traffic with injected attacks and an IsolationForest baseline (ROC-AUC ≈ 0.87). See research & dataset.
Is it free, and is there an API?
The live platform is free in a browser, and there is a documented REST/WebSocket API plus CSV/JSON/GeoJSON exports. See the API docs.
Is using AeroScope legal and private?
It only aggregates publicly broadcast ADS-B, which is what many open networks already do; follow your local laws. It does not transmit, jam or interfere with any aircraft. See our privacy policy.
Where does AeroScope get its flight data?
From public volunteer ADS-B networks including adsb.fi, adsb.lol, airplanes.live and OpenSky, plus a satellite-ADS-B layer, hexdb.io for registry lookups and aviationweather.gov for weather. AeroScope operates no receivers of its own and holds no private or classified feed.
Why do aircraft disappear from the map?
Almost always a coverage gap. ADS-B reception is line of sight, so aircraft drop out beyond receiver range, at low altitude behind terrain and buildings, and over oceans where no ground receiver exists. It is rarely anything the aircraft did.
Can AeroScope be relied on for safety-critical decisions?
No. It must never be used for air traffic control, navigation, separation or collision avoidance. It is not certified for operational aviation use, holds no airworthiness approval, and makes no completeness guarantee.