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Network · Lightcone

Lightcone

Your sky, measured.

Every community receiver gets its own Lightcone page, visible only to whoever runs it: a cone of light showing how far it really reaches, altitude by altitude, and what holds it back. Below, a sample receiver.

One receiver’s sky, measured aircraft by aircraft

sample receiver
300km
reliable range at cruise altitude
towards the north-west · 9–13 km altitude
50%
of the sky the terrain allows you

One receiver’s sky, measured aircraft by aircraft.

How far it reaches, at what altitude, what blocks it and how to improve it. A Raspberry Pi, an RTL-SDR dongle and a 1090 MHz antenna would give you yours, and your sky would add to the whole community’s.

Become a feeder I already have a receiver
Altitude
Layers
aircraft you almost always hear aircraft that pass but you don’t hear how far the terrain would let signals reach possible shadow zone

Altitude exaggerated ×14 · rings every 100 km · drag to rotate, pinch or Ctrl+wheel to zoom, arrow keys work too.
A computer-generated sample receiver: its shape and numbers are plausible but belong to no real receiver.

What you get with a receiver

Your light cone

How far you reach, direction by direction and altitude by altitude, measured on the real aircraft flying around you.

What blocks you and how to improve

The comparison with the terrain horizon tells you whether mountains or your setup hold you back, and where to look.

Your place in the network

The MLAT positions you help make, the aircraft only you hear, your records. A card to share, with no coordinates.

Range by direction

sample receiver

Measured and allowed by the terrain, in 20° sectors.

measured (≥ 50% of aircraft heard) terrain limit

Your horizon

sample receiver

The skyline seen from your antenna, computed from open elevation data. The light above it shows how much of what the terrain lets through you actually hear at cruise altitude.

Link your receiver

  1. Open this page from the receiver’s network: if it feeds us from there, we recognise you straight away, as on “Is my data arriving?”.
  2. For the terrain, the readings and the records, or from another network (phone, office), run this on the receiver:
    curl -sX POST https://api.flyitalyadsb.com/v2/receiver/claim
    It only answers when the request leaves from the same address the receiver feeds us from. If several receivers share that address, add the MLAT name:
    curl -sX POST https://api.flyitalyadsb.com/v2/receiver/claim \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"name": "your-MLAT-name"}'
  3. Enter the code it prints below. It lasts 10 minutes and works once; this device stays linked for 90 days.

Who can see this page

  • Only whoever controls the receiver. We recognise you by the address your feed comes from; from another network, a code the receiver itself requests from our servers is enough.
  • The receiver’s position never leaves our servers: this page only receives distances in km relative to the antenna.
  • Only whoever has the code sees the terrain, the readings and the records: the horizon profile would be enough to find the spot, and people sharing your connection shouldn’t see it.
  • Sharing is your choice. The card carries no map, coordinates or horizon profile.
  • Other receivers’ positions stay private: of your MLAT partners you only see how many there are and how far.

Coverage: the MLAT engine’s per-receiver map (20° sectors × 5 altitudes × 25 km rings). Horizon: open elevation data, line of sight with standard refraction.