A live air traffic radar, originally for EAA AirVenture Oshkosh — the world's busiest control tower for one week a year. Built on free, zero-config public data sources.
- Aircraft detail on selection: registration, type, operator, year built, size class, and a photo when available. Filed routes (origin → destination, plus a clearly-labeled straight-line ETA estimate) for scheduled airline flights. A real recorded flight-history line when OpenSky has one, falling back to a great-circle estimate, falling back to nothing — never a fabricated line.
- Filter by category — commercial, military, or GA/hobby traffic.
- Installable PWA — add to your home screen for a fullscreen experience.
- Works anywhere, not just KOSH — pass
?lat=&lon=&label=to point the radar at any airport, e.g./?lat=33.9425&lon=-118.4081&label=LAX. Live traffic and real runway geometry both follow; the Fisk VFR corridor and "day of AirVenture" counter are Oshkosh-only and only show for the default location.
| Source | Used for |
|---|---|
| airplanes.live | Live aircraft positions, registration, type, operator, year built — fetched directly from the browser, so each visitor's own IP counts against its rate limit instead of one shared server IP |
| OpenSky Network | Real recorded flight-history tracks (/tracks/all) |
| adsbdb.com | Aircraft photos, filed route lookup by callsign |
| OurAirports | Real runway geometry, worldwide — curated for KOSH, fetched and filtered server-side by proximity for anywhere else |
| CARTO / OpenStreetMap | Basemap tiles |
See FUTURE.md for known limitations and deferred work.
bun install
bun devOpen http://localhost:3000.
No environment variables are required — every API used is free and keyless. If OpenSky's anonymous rate limit becomes a bottleneck, see the note in FUTURE.md about registering a free OpenSky account for higher limits.
This is a standard Next.js app — deploy it on Vercel with no special configuration.
Note
This was built as a small proof-of-concept using AI, but the state it's in now is still very usable, and I do consider it to be polished enough to be deployed publicly.