You probably found yourself watching aircrafts departing and landing at airports before. You might have wondered where departing flights are heading to and you might have imagindes what it would be like to follow the aircraft to the sky, finding out where it would go. Standing on the ground the destinations of aicrafts remain an enigma. One usually could only follow them as long as they have been in sight, before they would become one with the horizon. Only a small group of people was able to follow the aicrafts path, knowing exactly where they are located, where they departed from and where they would go. While the aircrafts were already invisible to the human eye for a long time, the air traffic controller has the aircraft on the radar screen from start to destination. Not only does the flight radar provide the exact locations of all flights, but also information on airport, flight number and destination – information, which is essential for smooth air traffic control in the sky.
For a long time the flight radar was a well-kept secret. Only air traffic controllers knew exactly where an airplane was located and where it was going. Thanks to the Internet and digitalization, nowadays no one has to become a professional air traffic controller to determine the location of airplanes. This can be done comfortably via the Internet – at the click of a mouse – or with regard to smartphones – by a single fingertip. All flights from all over the world, can be viewed by anyone. And in order to do so, one basically has two types of choices. One can either look for a specific flight to watch and follow or one is watching all the incoming, outgoing or bypassing flights of a certain airport or within a certain region with a flight radar.
Why is it interesting to follow a flight with flight radar?
Whenever a member of the family, a friend or a colleague from work traveled with an aircraft, there used to be a kind of uncertainty between take-off and landing. Would everything go well? This question could only be answered after the aircraft successfully landed in the desired destination. This feeling of uncertainty was not due to technology or a lack of security when flying. Simply put, the problem was, that you could not know where the plane with the person you care about was located exactly. Did it already reach its destination? Was there a delay? Had the aircraft already crossed the national frontier, or was it right in the middle of one of the oceans? Which route would be taken to reach the desired destination? We had no other choice, as to estimate and make guesses about the current whereabouts of the flight. Nowadays the situation improved a lot. And this means a lot less worries for everyone who was left at home. Flight radar provides the desired information in real time. All one needs to know to check a flight on flight radar is the flight number. Having the flight number at hand, one can search directly for the desired flight and receive exact information on the status-quo. In order to do so, one simply has to enter the flight number into a search field and click on “Start”. One can highlight the flight alongside other air traffic or choose to display only the one desired flight on the radar. The current position of the flight will be displayed on a virtual world map. That’s how easy it is to operate flight radar.
Flight movements around an airport
The modern air traffic is very dense. With surprise one will look at the number of flights coming in and out to different airports when using a flight radar for the first time. Large airports like Frankfurt am Main, London Heathrow, Paris Charles-de-Gaulle or New York John F. Kennedy have a very high volume of departing and landing aircrafts. Passenger and cargo aircraft start in the second phase. For outsiders, these airports look like an opaque jungle. The flight radar helps to understand better what is happening at the airport regarding daily business. However, a visit to the airport cannot be replaced, even though a complementary flight radar might be a good supplement to the visit.
By using the aerial radar one can follow the action around an airport from the point of view of an air traffic controller. Here, the flight radar offers various possibilities depending on how one uses the zoom. The closer one zooms in, the better one can follow the individual flights. The flight radar shows whether an airplane is departing or arriving. One can also see where it is – in real-time. Embedded in a map with further information it can easily be identified over which city or village or more generally speaking over which part of the country the aircraft is flying at the moment of interest. If one zooms out of the map, these details become blurred and more general information are provided. The flight radar offers a better overview of the airport and its surroundings. An overview of all of the United Kingdom, its neighbors or all of Europe – even the whole world – is of course also possible.
Flight radar is free and easy to use
Would you like to pursue a specific flight, for example from London Heathrow to Paris Charles-de-Gaulle? Then you could do the following. Zoom in to London Heathrow to see the aircraft. After it is started, you zoom out. Afterwards you will see which path the airplane will take and at the same via which route it left the area of the airport behind. When the plane has reached its travel altitude and travel speed, one can zoom back and limit oneself to occasional observation. In Paris, one can then zoom back in again to follow the details of landing at closer sight.
Logically if one is to follow an aircraft with the radar, there is need for an electronic device like a Personal Computer, a Laptop or Notebook, a Tablet Computer or a Smartphone. Each device must of course be connected to the Internet at first. For Tablets and Smartphones there are special apps which one can purchase and download. The use of the aicraft radar is free and easy. Wherever you are and at whatever time you see an airplane in the sky, you can quickly and easily determine which flight number the aircraft has, where it is coming from and going to, and which type of aircraft you are seeing and which airline it is part of.
Flight radar – a fascinating discovery
The radar has a long and fascinating history. It dates to the year 1886. During that time, Heinrich Hertz was able to create electromagnetic waves in the course of an experiment for the first time ever. Hertz proofed that the reflection of radio waves of metal objects is possible. A few years later in 1904, Christian Hülsmeyer began the first attempts of locating metal objects by throwing electromagnetic waves at them. After that, radar technique was not in any scientific focus until the Second World War. In the pre-war years in 1935, the Scottish physicist Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt was the first to discover an aircraft using radar technology.
Watson-Watt is widely regarded as the radar pioneer. However, there are contradictory statements. In any case, Watson-Watt made it possible to locate a Handley Page H.P.50 bomber with the aid of an aircraft radar. The physicist continued to develop the methodology, but radar systems and the aerial radar were also developed further in other countries in the 1930s. In February 1935, scientists in Great Britain were able to follow airplanes with the help of aerial radar for up to 13 kilometers. On 18 December 1939, the German Air Force for the first time flew an attack against British bomber aircrafts with the support of a flight radar. 12 of the 22 bombers were detected and shot down. In January 1943, the British used a mobile radar system in airplanes for navigation. Both the German and the British side used „Düppel“ to defend themselves, metal strips, which would disturb the aerial radar.
Flight radar after World War II
After 1950, there was a great variety of studies in the US, including semiconductors and microprocessors, including the Synthetic Aperture Radar – efforts to make radar systems work more perfect. During these days, the radar was already used as a standard equipment on board of civil aircrafts. The Air Traffic Control (ATC) was a breakthrough for airspace monitoring as the groundbreaking first civilian application of the aircraft radar.
Flight radar today
The flight radar still has to run a number of important tasks today. Radar systems are used for a wide range of applications. By military and defense organisations of states, the radar is often used for safety and early detection. There are also several applications for airplanes, for example the panoramic radar for air traffic monitoring – stationary as flight safety radar or mobile inside of the aircraft (AWACS). In addition, radar systems are being used to pursue targets for airborne air defense. Another area of application is the radar on board. A radar is for example located in the front tip of most aircrafts to detect weather fronts and other aircrafts.