Interesting Websites.

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
Thought I'd create a thread for sites you might come across or know of, that could be of interest to others.

I'll start it off with a couple of well known sites but that might be new to some. Flight Tracker, which shows air traffic world wide in real time (ish) and if you're a plane spotter (complete with flying jacket style anorak) will be fascinating. If you're willing to spend a few quid you lose the adverts and get access to a 3D view from the air, which can be very 'train spotter' like. (I've spent many an hour stacked over Peebles waiting for a landing slot at Edinburgh.)

https://www.flightradar24.com/52.79,-2.62/9

There's also one for marine traffic, yes .. ship spotting. Really quite useful if you live on the coast and you have a Sou'wester Anorak.

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-17.0/centery:32.6/zoom:9
 

Perrier

Banned
Ever fancied flying a drone but couldnt afford one ?
perhaps you wanted to fly one abroad but couldnt justify the cost of traveling ?

This site allows you to remotely fly a drone in some of the nicest areas in the world.
A trained drone pilot will take over should you get into any difficulties so its completely safe and all done from your own livingroom.

www.flythere.com

more info and examples here

 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
Thought I'd create a thread for sites you might come across or know of, that could be of interest to others.

I'll start it off with a couple of well known sites but that might be new to some. Flight Tracker, which shows air traffic world wide in real time (ish) and if you're a plane spotter (complete with flying jacket style anorak) will be fascinating. If you're willing to spend a few quid you lose the adverts and get access to a 3D view from the air, which can be very 'train spotter' like. (I've spent many an hour stacked over Peebles waiting for a landing slot at Edinburgh.)

https://www.flightradar24.com/52.79,-2.62/9

There's also one for marine traffic, yes .. ship spotting. Really quite useful if you live on the coast and you have a Sou'wester Anorak.

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-17.0/centery:32.6/zoom:9
I use these to 'calibrate' corrections for the sometimes rather optimistic information that ferry companies and airlines issue.

I had to pick some people up at Manchester Airport from a transatlantic flight. The published information would have had me sitting around (and paying) for quite a while. I waited until the plane actually flew over Anglesey, then set off, parked up for a few minutes a couple of miles away, waited for the "we've got our bags" call and arrived as they walked out of the door.
 

Noah

Well-Known Forumite
I will have to get the rail sites that Mrs Noah's son uses.

Rather less interesting unless you enjoy playing around with historical statistics & maps - https://www.populationspast.org/imr/1861/#10/52.7471/-2.3367 For some reason it opens with infant mortality in 1861 (so why is Stafford higher than surrounding areas? ) but other years and a wide range of subjects are available.
 

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
Although I've put this site up on another thread I think, it's worth repeating here. This is an SDR .. (Software Defined Radio.) This site is good because it gives you access to the whole range of LF/MF/HF radio spectrum. That's long wave, medium wave and short wave covering literally from a few KHz to over 29 MHz. It uses what's known as a waterfall display, a sort of time dimension to the tuning dial. You can zoom in on any frequency and tune it as you wish, selecting the modulation as required. CW means continuous wave, i.e. Morse. AM and FM for broadcast and USB/LSB are upper and lower sidebands for speech (you need to tune these carefully.)
It is literally a very sensitive radio receiver to use as you please.

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

This second link is similar but only covers the amateur radio bands. Interestingly it is sited quite close to Stafford at what used to be RAF Hack Green, not far from Nantwich where they have a secret nuclear bunker … (ooops, I gave it away … :eek:)

http://hackgreensdr.org:8901/

There's some really queer stuff on HF (short wave.) From descendants of the legendary Russian Woodpecker (Over The Horizon radars) to time signals, met stations, aeronautical communication and lots and lots of Chinese broadcast stations, and some quirky transmissions that I suspect are of interest to 'the lads.' Alas the BBC World Service seems to have disappeared from its once prominent position.
 
Last edited:

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
Definitely didn't need it last night. Rained all night, coupled with strong winds.

So talking about weather, this is an interesting site, especially for tracking storms all over the world. You can roll the Earth around and zoom in/out with your mouse and check out the winds over the whole globe. If you bring up the menu you can select sea conditions and various other options. You can also change the projection method (although there doesn't seem to be a projection for Flat Earthers.)

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-22.55,51.90,421
 
Last edited:

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
I was not sure of mentioning this site because in order to take advantage of its facilities you have to set up an account, but it is all free of charge. Pretty much trade recognised I've been using it for five years or so. What I like are the tools you can use, and download.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/


You can setup a broadband monitor on the site, which will graphically show you your broadband usage and performance over time:
BBmonitor.jpg

Broadband monitor that works from the site. (Yes, I've smudged out my IP address, I'm trained that way.) :heyhey:

They have a speedtest which I think is one of the best on the net, and you can plot your speed performance going back years if you use it on your account. Here's my broadband history over recent years … you can clearly see where I changed ISP some years back. This is all kept on the website.
SpeedtestPlot.jpg


You can download a tbb monitoring tool that runs on your PC and displays your network/broadband activity, it works fine on Windows 10.

LiveMonitor.jpg


This might look a bit blurry but that's because I've downsized the screen shot.

I know a lot of people don't like setting up accounts on websites because you have to submit your email address, all I can say I've never suffered spam from this site as far as I know. They do seem to behave well and their news items are informative. Their tools are excellent.

Just saying. :cool:
 
Top