Getting Started – Reading the Map

The UKAFG Map is available on [Interactive Map] to logged-in site users — if you don’t see any data on the map, check that you’re logged in first.

The Layers Panel

On the left (or as a slide-up panel on mobile) is the Layers panel — this is where you switch on the data you want to see: airfields, airspace, live flights, weather, and more. Each section can be expanded or collapsed, and a badge on the panel header shows how many layers you currently have active.

Click the panel’s collapse arrow to hide it and get a full-screen view of the map; click again to bring it back.

View Controls

In the corner of the map you’ll find:

• Home — resets the map view back to the default UK-wide view.
• My Location — centres the map on your current position (your browser will ask permission to share your location). You’re shown as a blue marker, which shrinks to a small dot as you zoom out so it doesn’t hide the map. A small popup then offers to Save the position as your radar location, so it’s remembered for the Aircraft Radar View and the aircraft table’s distances; ignore it and nothing is saved. If you already have a radar location somewhere else, it asks before replacing it, and it doesn’t ask at all if you’re already there.
• Range rings — once you have a radar location set (see My Location above), draws rings at 10, 25, 50 and 100 nautical miles around it, each labelled with its distance — a quick way to judge range at a glance without opening the radar or aircraft table. Greyed out until a radar location is set.
• Basemap switcher — swap between Street, Dark, Satellite, Terrain and Radar map styles. Radar (the monitor icon) gives the map the look of an air traffic controller’s radar display; see The Radar Map (ATC Display View). Street and Dark are a linked pair: whichever of the two is showing always follows the site’s own light/dark mode, even after you’ve picked one yourself — so it switches automatically as you change the site’s theme, and stays correct next time you visit. Satellite, Terrain and Radar have no light/dark version, so once you pick one of those it stays until you pick something else. The Layers panel, buttons, popups and aircraft table turn dark with the site regardless of which basemap you’re on.
• Fullscreen — expands the map widget to fill your whole screen; click again (or press Esc) to return to normal view. Without it, the map already sizes itself to the space between the page header and the footer, so the whole page fits your browser window and there is nothing to scroll.
• Aircraft table – opens a sortable list of the aircraft in view along the bottom of the map; see The Aircraft Table.
• Live military board – the shield button opens a board of every military aircraft airborne now; see The Live Military Board.
• Radar – opens the standalone Aircraft Radar View, a pop-out sweep scope showing live aircraft as blips. This is separate from the Radar map style in the basemap switcher, which restyles the whole map.
• Full-screen app view – switches to the chrome-free, phone/tablet-friendly Full-Screen App View, with its own Map/Radar/Both switcher.

Starting Over

If you’ve built up a lot of layers and want a clean slate, use Reset All Layers in the layers panel header — this switches everything off in one click without affecting your saved Flight Tracker alerts or profile settings.

Customising the Panel

Next to Reset All Layers is a sliders icon — Customise panel — for tailoring the Layers panel to how you actually use it:

• Hide sections you never use, with a checkbox per section.
• Reorder the sections you keep, using the up/down arrows next to each one.
• Auto-close after a change — closes the panel a couple of seconds after your last change, so it tidies itself away without you needing to close it by hand.
• Aircraft data block — choose what the label under each aircraft shows, over how many lines, and whether it sits above or below the aircraft; see Customising the Aircraft Data Block.

These preferences are saved with your other map settings, so they follow you to any device you log in on — including switching between your two saved profiles; see Using Two Tracker Profiles.