iFly GPS Forum

I still haven't found out what ATC sees. (But I suspect that at least some of them still have those dim screens that you can only see with the lights out in the room.) But what I do know is that I see very little traffic unless I let iFly display airline traffic up in the flight levels. Yesterday I flew for an hour within 15 nm of KRIC, listening to 6 or 8 other aircraft announcing takeoffs and landings on the KFCI frequency but never saw a one of them on my display. And FlightAware didn't track me, either, even though I went up to 2200 feet for a while, hoping to get its attention. That was mid-afternoon, when there aren't many airline ops at RIC, but there's always traffic between 30,000 and 40,000 in this area.

Arrrgh. Thanks, Cobra. I've been a registered Basic User for several years--but my iPhone evidently forgot I was logged in. Anyway, I thought I was--and was still logged in with my Mac, which I didn't think to use when looking for my recent flights. The Mac FlightAware showed me; and now that I've logged in on the phone, it does, too.

And it (now) shows part of my track from the most recent flight.

But not much of it. On the 29th I departed KFCI, landed on the river southeast of the bridge (lower right), flew around in that area for a while, and eventually landed back at KFCI. Here's FlightAware's take on it:

Thre green line begins near where I had climbed to 2200 feet. The white lines are guesses.

FlightRadar24 and PlaneFinder never see my Searey, no matter how high I go. That's especially unfortunately because the iPhone version of PlaneFinder has that terrific $5 Augmented Reality upgrade that identifies an aircraft when you point the phone in its direction. (You see an indication of the aircraft apparently flying on your screen, as if you were making a video of it with the phone's camera. If you haven't tried Augmented Reality yet, five bucks is a cheap ticket.)

Try FlightAware, Mike. It's the only app I've found that ever sees me. Plane Finder and FlightRadar24 never have. Apparently it's because PF and FR24 only get results from aircraft with 1070 mHz transmitters. Even FlightAware doesn't always work. It has never shown my track for an entire flight, not once.

It's disheartening to find that ADS-B seems to be worse than useless to pilots as a traffic indicator.

But you should know whether the FAA's ADS-B test site tracks you. (I can't think of the proper name right now.) But you have to get high enough to wake it up. It has never reported seeing me unless I got above about 2,000 feet AGL.