Virtual plane spotting

First you need to find out what planes are flying overhead.  This is the traditional way, by hooking up an airband radio to your computer.  Luckily there are now other ways of monitoring what’s flying overhead.  This software can also handle input from the newer radar equipment available.

Flight Aware will track planes coming in and out of (or nearby) your local airport.  Here we are looking at traffic in and around Seattle, if it’s night time then you won’t see much on the map.  If you’re serious then it’s worth creating a free account here.

Flight Stats also has information about what’s happening at your local airport.  It also has information on delays, and a ticker of delays around the USA. If those delays look at all interesting, then you can tune in to air traffic control all around the world by finding a streaming mp3 at this site.

We should by now have some aircraft registration numbers.  You can find pictures of the planes by searching this airliners.net or planespotting.net.

This site will tell you what plane spotters with radar have seen recently, you can search by aircraft or airport.  It won’t include every single flight, but it may find things that the public databases we started with won’t.  Similarly, but designed more towards getting a fleet, this site also has plane sightings.