Month: June 2019

As a user of this app Explane, you might ask yourself: what do they do with all those registrations? We publish them! At https://reports.explane.org.

Please take a look at that brand new site. Together we already made over 40.000 of aviation noise measurements (as of June 28th, 2019).

At the site you can zoom in to the data that is important for your community. You can easily make screen shots and you are free to publish them on your own site, your social media account or via e-mail to send to your local politicians or press.

Please make use of this wealthy source of information. For now, it’s our only alternative to the crooky calculations from the aviation industry. Read more >

At this moment our app Explane reports more often than normal that there is no plane to be found in the noise that you tried to capture.

The reason for this is that work is being done on the database that supplies the aircraft data to Explane. The Open Sky Network – supplier of this information – is working on improvements to its systems.

The network reported this a few days ago via Twitter:

Just a note that the tracks part of our API is under maintenance for a while to make some necessary improvements. You can always use flights for most intents and purposes: https://t.co/bR34IB9T0p

— OpenSky Network (@OpenSkyNetwork) June 14, 2019

Unfortunately we do not know how long this maintenance will take. We do hope to be able to inform you as soon as possible if the systems are running as usual (or better)!

We hope for some consideration from your site. Unfortunately the cause is beyond our control. Read more >

UN Environment published an unusually stark critique of carbon offsetting on Monday. On Tuesday, the article was taken down, following queries by Climate Home News.

In the original article, archived by the Wayback Machine, a climate specialist at the UN organisation warned against considering carbon offsets as “our get-out-jail-free card”.

“The era of carbon offsets is drawing to a close,” Niklas Hagelberg wrote. “Buying carbon credits in exchange for a clean conscience while you carry on flying, buying diesel cars and powering your home with fossil fuels is no longer acceptable or widely accepted.” Read more >

We are regularly asked whether there is no way to continuously measure aircraft noise and to record the data in the database of our app Explane.

We had a look around on the internet and soon came to the conclusion that this is not very difficult. For example, at Raspberry Pi Geek you will find a fairly complete description for converting the microcomputer into a continuous sound meter.

The costs of such a continuous measurement system can be quite low. For 25 euros you can buy a Raspberri Pi, for another 100 to 150 euros an accurate dB-meter (for example from Peak Tech) with a USB connection that is needed to connect the meter to the computer. Read more >