Unable to see private aircraft

Hi all,

First off, thanks for providing this API! I've been trying to get data for some aircraft associated with a flying club, and those aircraft have yet to show up in the OpenSky data. They all have ADS-Bs, they're flying in an area where there appears to be good coverage, and yet...nothing. (Attached is a pic showing current coverage in my area, and a flight that I knew was in the air at the same time.) Here's a sample query I've used:

https://USERNAME:PASSWORD@opensky-network.org/api/states/all?icao24=a6c237

I'm stumped. Is my query bad, is this a limitation of the data, or do I need to do something to allow data to be returned for our general aviation aircraft?

Thanks,
Stephanie

Thanks for the quick reply!

The second screenshot was from FlightAware - I was watching the aircraft on their site to know when I should (hopefully) be getting data returned from OpenSky. A few minutes before that screenshot, FlightAware had them at 5,000' at 47.2461, -123.0394 (timestamp 1508472828).

Here's another of our GA aircraft I've been watching tonight -
https://username:password@opensky-network.org/api/states/all?time=1508039895&icao24=ad8295

FlightAware had them at 6,000 ft at 48.6367, -122.5400 for timestamp 1508039895. That's an interesting thought about aircraft being less noticeable at lover altitudes - I didn't know that about ADS-B receivers. You are correct in that a lot of these aircraft are flying at 5,000 - 6,000 feet (4,500 - 5,500 feet above ground level), so maybe that's what's happening. FWIW, here's the query for all our airplanes; I have yet to get data on any of them (but then, maybe there's data when I wasn't looking?).

https://username:password@opensky-network.org/api/states/all?icao24=a1d2c8&icao24=a5eb18&icao24=a6c237&icao24=ad4328&icao24=a5374f&icao24=ad8295&icao24=aa38f3&icao24=a9dea0&icao24=aa33d5&icao24=a221d4&icao24=adbcd8

So, sounds like I may be running into limitations with the network's ADS-B reception, vs. having, say, an incorrectly formatted API call?

Thanks for checking - that helps to know that they're showing up in the data, albeit occasionally. I'll have to look into putting a receiver up at our house and/or at the hangar; it'd be nice to be able to contribute to the dataset. In the meantime, thanks for all the help!