Can aviation enthusiasts in the captain really receive the signal from the tower control?

? 10 1 National Day, the disaster movie's "Captain" adapted from a real event was released in full swing. There is a scene in the movie that attracts everyone's attention: Guan Xiaotong plays an aviation enthusiast who is nervously watching the progress of things, and the director also takes a lot of shots for this young group. After watching the movie "Captain", many viewers also have such questions: "Why can fans track the position of the plane?" Recently, well-known Weibo aviation bloggers have popularized the reason why domestic aviation enthusiasts can track the position of civil aviation aircraft.

He said that aviation enthusiasts use broadcast automatic correlation monitoring (ADS-B) technology to detect the position of civil aircraft. This technology is more similar to a "station" passively receiving signals containing its own information and altitude latitude and longitude coordinates, and sending these received data to the server continuously, and then the server processes these data into points and tracks on the map. There are many such "stations" in China, some of which are set up by civil aviation departments, and the data are exclusive to civil aviation departments. Some of them were set up by aviation enthusiasts. Aviation enthusiasts usually have three ways to get such a site. One is to apply for a free "station" from the tracking website (you need to share data with the tracking website to get some website permissions), the other is to buy a ready-made "station", and the other is to make your own "station" (you can also share data with the tracking website).

The cost of building such a simple "station" is not high, but it can track planes within a dozen kilometers or even hundreds of kilometers around. If you share these data with the tracking website, you can * * * share the basic information, current position and historical trajectory of a specific aircraft received by the "site" (only the "site" where this website shares data) with everyone who logs in to the tracking website.

The function of the station also makes up for the shortage of radar monitoring range, and monitors the operation of aircraft at a lower cost for air traffic management. The existing information software of major airlines will also use this information to predict flight status. However, due to the delay and equipment reasons, the positioning accuracy of the aircraft seen by aviation enthusiasts is still problematic, and the monitoring coverage is also very small. However, this group has also contributed its own contribution to such incidents.