Is MLAT used at all by OpenSky?

2 years 5 months ago #1665 by ybull
Q: Does OpenSky support MLAT-derived tracking at all?  A search for "MLAT" across the forums here returns nothing, although I notice MLAT is mentioned as a source type for some API calls here opensky-network.org/apidoc/rest.html
Q: If yes, how do we configure our feeders to send it?  This is well-supported with someother ADSB aggregators.

Background and examples:

I've been running a dump1090-fa receiver for about 2 years now and feed to OpenSky-Network.  Occasionally I use the API here to do queries as well. 

My system is tracking via MLAT and that works fine because I see many planes each day with positions via MLAT on my local displays.  But it seems that my feeder does not send MLAT-derived tracks to OpenSky. 

Example: A few minutes ago I heard and saw two A-10 Thunderbolts fly low over us.  So I looked at my Tar1090 to see what they were.  Only one of the two apparently had its transmitter on, which is ICAO24= AE19A7 and it was only trackable via MLAT during that flyover.

I then tried to see if this track showed up in OpenSky, by doing this API query:  opensky-network.org/api/states/all?icao24=ae19a7 and the response is essentially empty, returning only the current timestamp and "states": null

So this left me wondering if it's simply not tracked at all or if it's being filtered here because it's a military craft.

Then I found a different MLAT track in my local system, which is ICAO A8CC46, United Airlines.  This one DOES return current data from curl -s "opensky-network.org/api/states/all?icao24=a8cc46"
{"time":1635699296,"states":"a8cc46","UAL295  ","United States",1635699296,1635699296,-89.409,41.7743,11887.2,false,269.96,85.3,0.33,null,11963.4,"4604",false,0,1}  which indicates the source was ADS-B, but if I query "...states/own?icao24..." I get no data. 

This suggests the missing tracks have nothing to do with filtering but that MLAT isn't being included by the feeder at least in my case.

Thanks.

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