OPAL

Open Public Aeromedical Locator — proof of concept

connecting…
ADMIN PANEL
Admin view
signal status, no animation
Check FlightAware
manual fleet sweep · metered
Coverage map
lowest altitude witnessed per cell
Response cache 3s
shared across viewers
Refresh delay
page poll interval
OpenSky sensor ↗
adsb.lol free
adsb.fi free
own RX (Coober Pedy) free
airplanes.live free
ADSBiq free
AVDelphi $0.01–0.05/call funds ↗
AeroAPI metered portal ↗
Flightradar24 $9/mo · 60k credits usage ↗
▾ AIRCRAFT LIST

Tracked aircraft

Waiting for first poll…

Legend

Colour = status
Live ADS-B contact right now
Estimated — projected since contact was lost
On the ground — any aircraft, any service
Colour family = service
Aeromedical — RFDS and MedSTAR (told apart by shape)
All other traffic
Shape = aircraft type
Fixed wing — PC-12 prop, or swept twin for the PC-24 jet
Helicopter — the MedSTAR fleet
Lines & markers
Path actually flown — last 30 min, fading with age
Remaining course to destination
Route confirmed via FlightAware in the last hour
Blue dot — position via FlightAware (AeroAPI), outside free ADS-B coverage

About this build

Live positions come from several community ADS-B networks at once, cross-referenced against a register of aeromedical airframes — fixed-wing and rotary, across the operators working this region. Whichever network heard an aircraft most recently supplies its position, so coverage is the union of them all rather than any single one. Paid sources (FlightAware/AeroAPI, Flightradar24, AVDelphi) are metered and used sparingly — for flight plans and destinations, and to follow a tail through the outback gaps where no free receiver can hear it.

Whether anything shows up over regional SA depends entirely on real receiver coverage at the time.

Data sources

Free community networks, with thanks: OpenSky Network, adsb.lol, adsb.fi, airplanes.live and ADSBiq, alongside our own receiver at Coober Pedy, which feeds back into those networks. Aircraft positions shown here may originate from any of them.

Map rendering by MapLibre GL JS, open source under the BSD 3-Clause licence. Terrain elevation in the 3D leg view comes from AWS Terrain Tiles — the Mapzen/Tilezen open dataset, built from SRTM and other public elevation sources. Map tiles by CARTO, data by OpenStreetMap contributors.