Feeding From a Receiver You Already Have

Summary: Adding airplanes.live to a receiver that already feeds another network, and checking the connection.

If you already run a receiver — PiAware, ADSBexchange, FlightRadar24, or a plain readsb or dump1090-fa install — you do not need another one. Feeding several networks from the same receiver is normal and costs nothing but a trickle of bandwidth.

1. Know Where Your Antenna Is

Have the latitude, longitude and altitude (above mean sea level) of the antenna itself to hand before you start. MLAT depends on it being right.

2. Run the Feed Installer

On the machine that runs your decoder:

curl -L -o /tmp/feed.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/airplanes-live/feed/main/install.sh
sudo bash /tmp/feed.sh

It asks for the position above and sets up the feed client alongside whatever is already there. Take the current command from airplanes.live/how-to-feed rather than trusting ours — it does change.

3. Check the Connection

Two connections should be established: one carrying ADS-B, one carrying the MLAT timing data.

netstat -t -n | grep -E '30004|31090'

Port 30004 is the ADS-B feed and 31090 the MLAT feed; you want to see both against the airplanes.live feed server, in state ESTABLISHED.

4. Watch It Arrive

• Your feeder appears at airplanes.live/myfeed within a few minutes.
• MLAT takes a little longer than ADS-B to settle, as the network works out how your clock behaves.
• After that, the aircraft you are hearing are on the UKAFG map — see Live Flights.

Why this is worth doing even though you already feed somebody else: MLAT only works where several receivers hear the same aircraft, and each network multilaterates its own feeders. Your receiver joining this one is what turns a Mode S-only military aircraft near you into a position on the map — the reasoning is in Contributing ADS-B Data: Why It Helps.

UKAFG is not affiliated with airplanes.live. This section is a plain-English walk-through for members who want to help; their own guides at airplanes.live/get-started are the authority, and worth checking, as commands, images and hardware move on.