Flight tracker for checking flight paths?

Is there any good flight tracker out there that would enable me to be more aware of flights overhead at night.
I can ask Siri what planes are over head, but I can do a better job just looking in the sky to see that.
I think it would be very beneficial to us laser users to have an accurate real time map of flight paths. I've seen apps that claim to do this before, most of the time are $$ and probably don't do as described.
Anyone care to drop there 2¢ here?

I find that FlightAware Live does a pretty decent job.

I use Flightradar24 and it is awesome, one of the best that exist, if not the best. :beer:

H2Oxide said:

I find that FlightAware Live does a pretty decent job.

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Yep, big fan of FlightAware here. I use it from tracking my incoming lasers to checking if my flights are departing on time

-Alex

It's important to notice that these services only display data from aircraft with ADS-B(ES) transponders enabled. This will include virtually all large civilian passenger and cargo aircraft, but will not display military aircraft, (police) helicopters, smaller private planes and such.

A name like flightradar is a bit deceptive in this case since the service only relies on messages actively transmitted by aircraft, and doesn't use any kind of radar at all.

The major difference is that a primary radar system will display -any- aircraft present (except those equipped with stealth technology to prevent exactly this), even those that do not carry any form of transponder or transmitter.

Another limitation of these ADS-B fed systems is that they rely on a receiver station to be able to 'see' the aircraft. At high altitude this poses no problem and multiple networked stations can see a single plane. At lower altitudes, however, this becomes problematic since the plane will disappear below the horizon for many stations and only ones very close to runways can 'see' them under 1000 feet or so.

So it's a mixed message: these sites can ensure a plane is overhead and you should not aim your laser there, but they cannot ensure airspace is clear in any fashion and you still need to be careful when shooting lasers into the air, especially when close to an airport or in areas where smaller planes or helicopters are commonly used.