I should preface this by saying I am relatively new to adsbexchange and tracking air vehicles in general. Please bare with me.  I live in Palm Beach. I also watch adsbexchange.com frequently to see what's out there. I noticed over the last few months that some helicopters which fly over my house do not show up on ADSB.

Here is a link to one of the helicopters run by the Palm Beach Sheriffs Office (I shall call them PBSO for short).  facebook page showing tail  number of PBSO heli
Notice the tail number is "N357RB". OK great. I looked this heli up because not 10 minutes ago (10:30pm on feb 13 2024) a  PBSO heli flew over my house and it does not show up on adsbexchange.com
You can look at this heli on adsbexchange.com with this link here and you will notice it does not show any flights for today? Well to hell with that. I just saw a heli pass overhead that looked a lot like a green Bell 429 Global Ranger, the same make of heli used by PBSO.
One thing to note is that occasionally, this PBSO heli WILL actually show up on adsbexchange. case in point here from january 29th. so this means the heli does have ads-b but for whatever reason it can turn it off?
I notice in the details on adsbexchange.com for this helicopter, it is listed as "LADD". According to the FAA "LADD" means: Aircraft owners and designated representatives can request LADD to limit aircraft data shared through FAA data systems.0 LADD replaces the Block Aircraft Registry Request (BARR) program and allows operators to select "FAA source blocking," in which aircraft data is limited to FAA use only and is blocked to all third parties, or "subscriber blocking," in which flight data is only made available to select vendors. The FAA is currently evaluating an option allowing operators to select specific third-party vendors with whom their flight data may be shared, but this capability is not yet available.

Ok so I am guessing that this Helicopter is somehow limited from being viewed on adsbexchange? If that is the case, then why is it's flight clearly visible from jan 29th of this year? This makes no sense to me unless they have some sort of switch to turn on adsb visibility and turn it back off to ground based trackers?   see here for a jan 29th track of N357RB on adsbexchange.com

From what I can tell by reading info online, I might need to set up my own ADS-B receiver to bypass the FAA LADD program, but I can not find any definitive info on if this would actually work or not.   Does anyone have any info on this or have a better way to track helicopters that are part of the LADD program? And has anyone set up their own ADSB reciever? I'm wondering how it went? It looks like a lot of fun.

Flight aware pretty much says it is not available for public tracking per the owner

I've recently gotten into Ardupilot (Arducopter), and you can get flight controllers that are ADS-B equipped to see local aircraft for the purpose of avoidance.

If you can get any ADS-B receiver, it should be easy to see any ADS-B transmitting aircraft in your area with the right software.

If the ghetto birds are not transmitting ADS-B for some reason, what will you do then?

It's pretty easy to set up a computer with SDR receiver and a small antenna and receive the ADSB in your local area, then you'll see everything that's transmitting.

IF there is nothing pinging the helicopter, it will stop transmitting.  Aircraft ADS-B transmitters are not always on.

Also, a ground-based ADS-B receiver will pick up high altitude planes over a fairly wide area, but stuff at helicopter altitude will be pretty limited - not much beyond what you can hear with your ears, unless you're lucky to be close enough to a ground station.

I must be missing something.

You can buy a premade setup from adsbexchange.com for both 1090Mhz and 978MHz for $400 or so

There you go.

Our police will turn theirs off.

Could also be 978UAT on anonymous mode. I do that frequently on one of my airplanes.

Wondering what a certain 3 letter agency thinks about that?

Not likely at any time other than all out continental invasion - but then you'll have other concerns.

While there may be exceptions, adsbexchange only tracks aircraft transmitting ADS-B messages on 1090 MHz. adsbexchange does NOT filter data, i.e. they do NOT respect the FAA LADD program.

Leaving aside the possibility of no adsbexchange coverage in a certain area there are many reasons an aircraft may not appear on adsbexchange:

1. They may be using the UAT 978 MHz frequency. This is pretty rare, generally only found on small, inexpensive aircraft, and very, VERY unlikely to be the case for any government-operated aircraft.

2. The transponder may be switched to transmit "Mode C" messages only. This is VERY COMMON among government-operated aircraft. Indeed, many MIL aircraft are still only equipped with Mode C. Such aircraft are allowed to operate this way via prior arrangement with the FAA ATC. This is the best approach for privacy because the aircraft is easily tracked by ATC but not trackable even by adsbexchange or privately owned/operated ADS-B receivers. Note that MLAT-capable ADS-B receivers do not track Mode C, only Mode S, the latter being the precursor to ADS-B.

3. The transponder may be switched off entirely. This is very unlikely, see (2) above.

4. The aircraft may be operating under the PIA program. These aircraft are not invisible to adsexchange but will appear with no tail number and not their "real" ICAO code. Instead there will be a call ign like "Foreflight 287" or "dotcom 1234", etc. Once you correlate such a callsign to a particular aircraft (like watching it fly oveyr) ou can then track it for as long as their PIA-assigned ICAO code remains valid. This is how certain folks are tracking Elon's and Taylor's flights. Unfortunately aircraft that are participating in PIA can change their codes every few weeks.

The govt gets an exemption and uses mode C when they want to.

Like the FBI Cessna circling my area this morning.  No hiding from my ears, Nikon and my scanners.  Listen to ATC comms.

MLAT


You wont get all the details of ADS-B but you will still know its there even when the ADS-B transponder is turned off.



ETA: bones up this morning transmitting on MLAT https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=ae6bee

Not quite, that stills relies on a transponder operating on mode-S.  The exempt aircraft are not.

I will cry myself to sleep LoL.

Thank you all for input. All of you have been very helpful and I think I am going to give ads-b receiver a shot and see how that goes, if nothing else It would be fun to have even if it does not track the dark police helis.
If that fails I will look into LMAT and In the mean time I have an old scanner I am going to try and see if I can pick up air comms.  

Csp made it so flightradar24 can’t track them because people were using it to watch when they were doing traffic enforcement on 80

Learn to fly, apply for the job.

I'll just leave these here.




Those are two different aircraft, on tail digit apart.
They spend alot of time in my area.

I recently had a helicopter fly a path down my driveway while my wife and I were out on a stroll.  Looked it up and it was owned by USDA and yes I have cattle and all the ranches by me do also.

Edit: it was 100-150 of the deck

They call and precoordinate it. No one working them cares.

I'm not worried about police helicopters. This should worry you.

But it doesn’t. You’ve made two posts about it with zero explanation, so it mustn’t be particularly important.

What is it doing?

Why should it worry me?

It’s a DHS CBP plane. It’s registration is public and its publicly trackable.

Does that look like a normal flight path?
They are listening and tracking.

Looks like a few of you have already succumbed to the conditioning.
God help us all.

You can put together a single band (1090 MHz) ads-b receiver / decoder pretty cheaply.

I run both FlightRadar 24 and ADSB exchange feeders out of my home office just because I had a couple spare Pi 4s sitting around.

A Raspberry Pi 4 and a cheap SDR dongle from Amazon and you are in business. ADSB Exchange has a Pi image available in the Raspberry Pi repo for ease of setup.  Plug it up, tell it where it is, and rock on.  Their setup includes nice data viewing options including map view of what you are receiving, etc

No, my post was snarky annoyance at people who post cryptic shit trying to garner attention instead of just simply saying what it is. I haven’t got time for guessing games, just spit it out.

Unless you can sneak on base and stick an air tag on them it won't happen,

Seems dangerous to turn off a collision avoidance system.

They are still squawking and talking. Mode C only iirc

I think you're confusing ads-b with a transponder. If it's on, ADS-B is constantly broadcasting. It's a fire and forget data transmission.

Transponders are what get"interrogated" and reply to that request.

Some operators, especially police and military, have permission to not broadcast their locations.

What is funny is when TCAS says there is something following you and ATC says there isn't.

Had a flyby check done and ATC said there was nothing following us. Climbed to the back and took a pic. Asked the ATC if they would like a picture of the plane they say didn't exist. No response.

Ipad in flight with WIFI from Stratus Xponder, a couple of years ago.

Dupe post

I looked it up on adsbexchange. Here's a track of it dicking around between Miami and Bahamas. Please share the info you have. I am genuinely curious.
N806MR

I use a pi4b for my home router running OpenWRT. I just checked and there is some sort of ADSB decoder software I can download and install from the repository. I'm going to try it. If it doesn't work I will buy a second pi4 and use your method.

No, it looks like you don't realize that everything else is also listening and tracking.  You don't need to hide from that plane.  You need to hide from everything.

Has anyone here tried building a Stratux ADS-B receiver using the Raspberry Pi image from https://stratux.me/ ?

It apparently supports more than just ADS-B reception (GPS, AHRS, etc.), inasmuch as it is intended to be a tool for in-flight use by pilots.

Snarky is right. Do you get everything in your life spoon-fed to you?
I don't want attention. If you are unable to determine the implications of what I have posted, so far, well....
Your momma must be proud you're living up to the family username.

Brother, sure, spoon feed me! But, frankly, I’d settle for some basic details. I work 55hrs/wk and have 3 kids under 3; I don’t have time to play CSI: GD. Your first two photos are low res enough that we’re guessing what we’re looking at. DHS or CBP, maybe? So? You’re in Texas; I’d expect CBP to be operating near the border. The second post is a zig-zagging flight path. Ok, so? Your third post reads like you think it’s an FBI/CIA white van trying to figure out how to round us up for the camps.
Doubtful, but plausible given our government, but even still literally every text you send, every call you make, every second you spend on the internet, and 87% of every second you spend in public is being “listened and tracked” and archived on a shiny spinning disk in Utah. What are these planes doing that’s more worrisome than that?

If you’re honestly trying to make people aware of something you find important stop posting implications and speak your mind, my man.

One of the challenges of communication is making sure the reader or listener understands what one is trying to communicate. A lot of people do very poorly in that area. Aside from general comms, I also get peeved over the use of industry jargon and acronyms that someone outside of the speaker's specific field cannot understand. I wrote tech papers in a former life, and I would proof-read them from the standpoint of my intended audience, asking myself "are they going to understand what I'm talking about here?"

Base on your past postings, this interest of yours makes perfect sense.

Thank you that was very helpful. Is there any thing else you would like to add?

There's a few of these N8xxMR planes around. Seems like old dynamic i s r  birds now in D H S registeation and colors doing patrols for immigration.

Nothing to be concerned with these guys.

Now the glowing PC 12's with cell repeaters and other fancy... them guys doing orbits you should take notice.

Black helicopter thread!!!!

Can't be all "protect the border" then get mad when you see border protection.

The PC12 sniffers are a different game and aren't being used for border protection.

As a quick update to this thread, I had previously filed a complaint with the FAA as a last ditch hail mary and it seems in the last couple of days the PBSO helicopters are now finally being recognized on adsbexchange.  I don't know if it was my complaint that did it or not, but N357RB and N526RB (which are PBSO) are now on adsbexchange.com nearly every day, sometimes many flights per day too.  Maybe it is coincidence but I'd like to think it was my complaint that got em to play by the rules. They are still listed as "LADD" or Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed, however.

Check it out: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a40047

Update2:  It seems there is a 3rd PBSO heli out there that I never knew about.

N357RB
N526RB
N795RB

I have no idea what most of y’all are even talking about here, but I find watching aircraft on ads-b very interesting.