About Us

Welcome to Plane Watch, a project born from the WA Community Access Network (WACAN) in 2014 - a registered Not-For-Profit. Based in Perth, Western Australia, we are a group of aviation enthusiasts dedicated to ADS-B and plane tracking technologies.

Plane Watch started with a single Virtual Radar Server instance. Our goal was straightforward: track planes over Western Australia and display them on a map. This project was initially just for our local area, a way to engage with our hobby of plane watching.

What started as a local initiative soon caught the attention of others. Enthusiasts from across Australia reached out, eager to contribute their ADS-B data. This growth was organic, driven by shared interests rather than a structured campaign. Our platform became particularly useful during bush-fire seasons, offering real-time information on fire-fighting aircraft.

As more people joined, our original system began to reach its limits. We used the period of COVID lockdowns to focus on technical improvements. This led to the development of Plane Watch 2.0. We have designed and built from scratch, an entire ingest pipeline including custom ADS-B decoder, optimisation and storage backends and HTML5 Canvas-based map UI.

Our progress is a testament to the collaborative spirit of our members. Everyone’s contribution, whether big or small, plays a crucial role. We’ve grown thanks to the shared interests of our members, not through aggressive promotion.

Our focus remains on improving our platform for our community of aviation enthusiasts. We’re continuously working on enhancing the technical aspects of Plane Watch and keeping our system efficient and user-friendly.

At its core, Plane Watch is a community project. It’s about like-minded individuals coming together to share data and insights into the world of aviation tracking. If you’re interested in joining us as a feeder or just a community member, hop into our Discord Server and say hey!