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.

Making the Panel Your Own

The sliders button in the panel header opens Customise panel:

• Hide sections you don’t use, and reorder the rest — each section has a show/hide switch and can be dragged into the order you want.
• Auto-close after a change — the panel folds itself away a couple of seconds after you tick or untick a layer, so the map is clear again without a second click.
• Aircraft data block — what the label under each aircraft shows (callsign, aircraft type, flight level, squawk), over how many lines, and whether it sits above or below the aircraft. See Live Flights.

These choices are saved in your browser straight away and, when you’re logged in, with your account, so they follow you to other devices.

Searching

The search box at the top of the panel finds airfields, navaids, transmitter sites, WTR companies and amateur repeaters by name — and by frequency: type 124.6 and you get everything on that frequency, with the service named against each result. When a search matches more than one place, a Show all on map row plots every result at once. A frequency search also offers Focus the map on 124.600: its airspace and the aircraft in it, which draws the airspace that frequency works and hides every aircraft outside it (the same mode Squawker PC’s Scanner Follow uses — see Scanner Follow).

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.
• Basemap switcher — swap between Street, Dark, Satellite, Terrain and Radar map styles. Until you pick one yourself, the map follows the site: the street map on a light page, the dark map on a dark one, changing as you switch dark mode. Whichever you pick after that is the one you keep, on every page and next visit. Radar gives the map an ATC radar display’s look: a black scope with a thin coastline, dashed borders and runways, no roads or place names; aircraft become radar targets (an amber square for civil, a cyan diamond for military, orange for a live QRA, red and blinking for an emergency) with a heading line that grows with speed, and your airspace overlays take a radar palette. The Layers panel, buttons, popups and aircraft table turn dark with the site either way.
• 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) – opens a board of every military aircraft airborne now; see Military Flight Filters & the Live Military Board.
• Read aircraft aloud (the speaker) – with this on, clicking an aircraft reads its summary with your browser’s own voice; see Reading the Aircraft Info Panel. The button only appears in browsers that can speak.
• Radar – opens the standalone Aircraft Radar View, a pop-out sweep scope showing live aircraft as blips.
• 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.