Plane Finder

July 2025

Plane Finder ADS-B & MLAT Receiver.

I've been interested in monitoring aircraft flight paths and listening in to flight communications for many years and  use the Plane Finder on my Ipad, Android phone and pc's. As of July 2025 I now have a Plane Finder ADS-B receiver installed in my shack and streaming flight data to Plane Finder covering the sky's over and around the Isles of Scilly.

ADS-B stands for Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast which is a digital transmission sent periodically by many aircraft. The data consists of flight information, instrument data and if equipped GPS position. The transmission can be received with an ADS-B receiver and the data displayed on a pc, tablet, mobile phone  or pc using suitable decoding software.

In my case I use the Plane Finder system supplied as a kit consisting of a Receiver, Aerial (1090MHz), GPS Aerial, Coax & Network cables. Installation is very simple the aerial needs to be mounted ideally outside above the roof to give a clear view of 360 deg's as does the GPS aerial this is likely the most difficult job. The receiver itself is positioned in my shack and connected to the aerials, power supply and router using the supplier cable. No setup is required as the receiver is fully configured.

As a benefit of running this kit I get a free premium subscription to the Plane Finder software which displays much more information than with the free APP which just displays position and basic flight details. The receiver also has a function called MLAT (Multilateration). Not all planes are equipped with GPS so their position can only be established by conventional ground radar. Many such planes will have a transponder fitted with responds to ground transmissions by sending a burst of data but with no GPS data. When the ADS-B receiver receives such a transmission it can triangulate with other ADS-B receivers using MLAT functionality to establish the planes position using a similar technique as GPS sat navigation. 

If you want to see Plane Finder in action please go to https://planefinder.net/