Why should I feed?

There are several benefits to feeding aggregation services.

1. It feels good to give back to the community that gave to you.

A relatively painless way to add real value to the entire project effort and support the community that is comprised of other people like you. It feels good to support others.

2. It is cheap / "free" to feed.

Even when you might not be in a position to contribute to the project with your time or financially, feeding your data doesn't cost anything to you. You've already paid for the computer, SDR and Internet access, so sending small packets of data to aggregators will not hurt you. It won't consume more time (once you've set it up), and it won't require any payment.

3. Your data enhances and corrects the data from others near you.

Even if there are others in your city/region feeding Airframes and other aggregation services, you will fill in the gaps of missing details and help to filter out erroneous or outright invalid data.

4. You will get access to the Airframes API.

We're still working on it, but if you are a consistent feeder you will receive minimal free access to the API for use in your own personal projects. This is a challenging effort that has real consequences to the cost to run the project, but we believe that you should at least be able to see your own data contributions. We have goals to expand beyond that.

5. You will potentially help to prevent bad things in the world.

Data from aggregation services like ADSBExchange have led to the capture of terrorists, dictators, and other bad actors. We don't claim that feeding is guaranteed to lead to this, but it is a comforting feeling knowing that you might have some contribution to that.

6. You will potentially help people to investigate accidents that happen.

Sometimes airplanes crash. Sometimes airplanes go missing. While the official investigation involves recovering the black box and acquiring official data link feeds, those that are curious or also media that is covering the crashes often would like access to the same kinds of data. Airframes collects data from feeders that contain information that often tells a greater story about the journey that the aircraft went on, and the more feeders that exist to provide data, the more chance we can figure out that whole story.

7. We ultimately can't do it without you.

You are a big piece of this puzzle. Without you contributing data from your region we can't gather the end-to-end flight route clarity we all need. Help by being the missing link.