360Radar initially came about through a desire to know when a low flying RAF Tornado would scream over my house at the entrance to the Usk Valley on its way to the Mach Loop. At the time there were a few aircraft tracking websites around and some dedicated programs but nothing that could be used across a wide range of devices and which covered the UK down to low level.
Working together with a few other aircraft tracking geeks in Wales resulted in a small and very rudimentary tracking system capable of tracking normally positionless aircraft over Wales. The Mach Loop attracts aviation entusiasts from all over the UK and it didn't take long for people living in other parts of the country to offer to join the tracking system. For a year and a half 360Radar ran in beta until the running costs became too much as we added more and more servers and it had to start to pay for itself through a modest subscription fee.
Currently we have just under 1,000 MLAT clients installed on receivers running across the length and breadth of the UK and have sent out more than 50 receivers too far flung locations in Scotland, Wales, the Lake District and the Isle of Man.
But we don't just cover the UK. Our coverage of Ireland is improving week by week and we also cover much of Europe thanks to our European partner. The result is a tracking network which tracks not only the ADSB equipped aircraft but also tracks hundreds of so-called positionless aircraft via MLAT (mulitlateration). The MLAT coverage is so good that the positions are fed to GA pilots who use PilotAware electronic conspicuity devices.
No other tracking network in the world does this. As part of the process of validating the results we even compared the calculated positions with the positions of the actual aircraft fitted with test equipment. And the accuracy was outstanding with the calculated position being within 370 metres of the actual position 77% of the time whilst 98% were within 1,100 metres.
So what started as a hobby has now become a full-time business supporting over 900 contributors and answering questions from subscribers seven days a week often from before 8 am and well into the evening. Despite that Pidea Ltd (the company behind 360Radar) is still run by just one person with the assistance of three volunteer moderators in our two Facebook groups.
360Radar is the trading name of Pidea Limited which is a company registered in England and Wales with the number 07516101 and with the registered office located in the hills of the Brecon Beacons at 5 Winsford Grove, Gilwern NP7 0RL.