What you get
- Free API access. The full live feed, the same endpoint paying subscribers use. Active while your receiver is reporting, and it resumes on its own after an outage.
- Your coverage on the public map. Aircraft only your receiver can hear appear on the radar. If you are somewhere the home antenna cannot see, you are the reason that patch of sky exists at all.
- Receiver statistics — aircraft seen right now, records accepted, uptime. Enough to tell whether moving the aerial actually helped.
- Rarer finds in your logbook, because your receiver hears things the rest of the network misses.
- Up to five receivers on one account.
The client reads from your existing decoder rather than taking over the dongle. PiAware, ADS-B Exchange, ADSB.fi and FlightBank can all feed from one Pi at the same time. If you already have a working receiver, this is one extra service, not a switch.
What you need
A working ADS-B receiver. If you already feed PiAware, ADS-B Exchange, adsb.fi or airplanes.live, you have everything — adding FlightBank is one line in a config file you have already got open.
If you are starting from nothing: a Raspberry Pi, an RTL-SDR dongle at around £25, and a 1090 MHz aerial somewhere with a clear view. Our receiver guide covers the hardware, and why antenna position matters more than everything else put together.
Adding FlightBank
We take standard Beast data, the same as every other aggregator. There is nothing to install and no account needed to start feeding.
If you run ultrafeeder
Add this to ULTRAFEEDER_CONFIG in your docker-compose.yml, alongside
whatever you already feed:
adsb,feed.flightbank.co.uk,30004,beast_reduce_plus_out;
Then docker compose up -d.
If you run readsb directly
Add this inside NET_OPTIONS in /etc/default/readsb:
--net-connector=feed.flightbank.co.uk,30004,beast_reduce_plus_out
Then sudo systemctl restart readsb.
If you run dump1090
dump1090 has no net-connector, so bridge its Beast output across:
socat -u TCP:localhost:30005 TCP:feed.flightbank.co.uk:30004
Wrap that in a systemd unit so it survives a reboot.
Beast output is a broadcast — feeding us takes nothing away from PiAware, ADS-B Exchange or anyone else you already support. Your dongle, your gain settings and your existing feeders are untouched.
Checking it worked
Your decoder log will show a connection being established to
feed.flightbank.co.uk port 30004. If the aircraft you can see start appearing on the
live map, you are feeding.
Common questions
Does it cost anything to run?
A Pi Zero 2 W and a dongle draw a couple of watts — pennies a month.
What data leaves my Pi?
Standard Beast messages — the ADS-B your receiver already hears, nothing more. No files, no personal data, nothing about the machine itself.
What happens if I turn it off?
Your decoder reconnects on its own when it comes back, and access resumes with it. Nothing to reapply for.
What about MLAT?
Multilateration needs raw timestamped message streams and at least four receivers hearing the
same aircraft at once — it cannot be done from decoded aircraft.json. It is planned,
and feeding now is what builds the receiver density it needs.