Hello from the FlightAware ADS-B team!

We’ve got a lot to celebrate this month.

We recently crossed an incredible threshold: we now have over 40,000 active ADS-B receivers feeding FlightAware. That achievement is built on years of innovation and community support, with real growth following the releases of dump1090 and PiAware. This month, we’re taking a brief look back at how those tools got started and how they helped build the network we’re celebrating today.

📈 From 0 to 40,000 Feeders

This milestone—40,000 active ADS-B receivers contributing to FlightAware—represents nearly 20 years of progress, beginning with our first FlightFeeder (we shared that story in a previous newsletter, now available on our blog). The real breakthrough came when anyone with an ADS-B receiver could start contributing directly to FlightAware’s flight tracking network.

That leap was made possible by the release of our PiAware software and the dump1090 decoder in the 2010s. What began as experimental, open-source software from hobbyists has grown into a worldwide network of contributors powering real-time flight tracking every day. This month, we thought it would be fun to dig into the history of that software.

January 2013: Like many great open-source projects, dump1090 began as a side project. Salvatore Sanfilippo (aka antirez) wrote it over the holidays in 2012 and shared it on GitHub in January 2013. It’s a lightweight Mode S decoder that allows you to decode Mode S and ADS-B signals, process those messages, and display live aircraft positions on a map.
Fun fact: antirez also created Redis, the extremely popular in-memory database.

April 2013: The hobbyist community quickly adopted dump1090, and it was forked many times as improvements were added. The most popular fork came from MalcolmRobb in April 2013, just months after the initial release. While antirez wanted to keep his version minimal, this fork extended the original with additional features and soon became the standard version.

September 2013: Recognizing the growth and popularity of this software, FlightAware began allowing ADS-B receiver operators to connect to our network. This let anyone contribute, but the process required significant technical know-how.

August 2014: FlightAware released the first public version of PiAware on August 30, 2014. This software package made it easy to connect dump1090 to FlightAware, allowing users to share their received data with minimal configuration. If the user was running FlightAware’s version of dump1090 (based on MalcolmRobb’s fork at the time), it could forward data directly. If PiAware detected a different version, it would translate the format before sending messages to FlightAware.

September 2014: Oliver Jowett (aka mutability) forked MalcolmRobb’s version to focus on packaging and usability for Raspbian, the official OS for Raspberry Pi devices. The first package release came in December 2014 and quickly became the go-to version for many hobbyists.

April 2015: FlightAware hired Oliver for his expertise—he still works with us today!

May 2015: As the network grew, reliability and maintainability became even more important. In May 2015, FlightAware forked from mutability to create a supported successor that preserved familiar interfaces but added performance improvements, decoder updates, and tighter integration with PiAware and SkyAware. The result was a stable, supported stack that let feeders spend less time tinkering and more time tracking. Oliver maintained both the mutability fork and FlightAware’s fork until 2017, when he focused fully on FlightAware’s version.

Almost 13 years after antirez’s original release, FlightAware continues to update and maintain our dump1090 fork and PiAware software—still open source on our github. Today, if you run a PiAware device or a FlightFeeder, you’re building on more than a decade of open-source collaboration that keeps the sky visible to everyone who looks up.

📶 Featured Host

Our featured host this month is hallshillfarm. David is a fixed wing and rotorcraft pilot who lives on a 61 acre farm near KMBT. ADS-B is line of sight so one of the best things you can do is to get your antenna mounted up high. David accomplished this by mounting his 30' above the ground. His site has fantastic range and receives messages from every direction.

At the top of a pole on the highest part of the property

Mounted along with an outdoor WiFi AP

Would you like to be featured as our host of the month?

STAY IN TOUCH

Click the link below to visit the ADS-B Flight Tracking discussion forum on our website, or follow us on social media to stay up to date with the latest news!