How to improve coverage in your area
There are several ways you can help improve OpenSky's coverage.
We recommend the following two options to purchase a Mode S/ADS-B receiver and contribute to the network. Both receivers have the OpenSky feeder preinstalled and require little technical expertise to setup and operate.
The OpenSky Receiver Kit from Jetvision is the cheapest (and our recommended) solution. The kit costs only 175 Euros (plus VAT) and includes all the hardware equipment and software that you need to setup a receiver at your place. This setup will give you already quite good reception with ranges of up to 600 km (depending on your environment). Setup and maintenance are very well documented in our manual.
The Radarcape is a more expensive alternative for users who want to support OpenSky with more accurate multilateration. The Radarcape costs 708.05 Euros but is equipped with an integrated GPS receiver for precise timestamps as required in multilateration applications.
Building your own radar is cheap and simple!
You can build your own home radar to receive and view air traffic on your computer in real-time for as little as 50$. With this cheap setup, you can track air traffic with ranges of up to 600km (depending on your environment and antenna installation). Don't worry if you are a beginner, setting up the receiver and software is pretty straight forward. There are plenty of manuals around and we recommend starting with the following links:
- https://github.com/openskynetwork/raspberry-pi-adsb
- https://github.com/jprochazka/adsb-receiver
- https://hub.docker.com/r/mikenye/opensky-network
- https://github.com/ketilmo/balena-ads-b#part-6--configure-opensky-network
As soon as your receiver is up and running, showing aircraft on the map, you can start feeding data to the OpenSky Network.
How to feed data to OpenSky?
Feeding data to the OpenSky Network is easy and straight forward. We support various receiver setups including dump1090 and Radarcape. Just select your type of receiver here and follow the instructions to start feeding.