Explane.org

Explane is an app that empowers you to register a flight above your head including the sound level (in dB) your smartphone measures.

If you touch the microphone at the start screen, a measurement is started for the duration of 10 seconds.

Choose the start of your measurement preferably in a way that the plane will pass you in these 10 seconds. Please keep your measurement pure and be careful not to measure any other noises.

If by accident you measure non-aviation noise, please don’t send the registration to our database. It would pollute our database and would make it less trustworthy.

The app only registers airplanes on a maximum attitude of 10.000 meters (30.000 feet) within a radius of 5 kilometers (3 miles). Read more >

Roelof Meijer is a professional app developer based in The Netherlands. He built this app free of charge, because he himself has to cope with traffic noise (trains) and he knows how difficult it is to counterbalance professional lobbyists.

The app implements an idea of SchipholWatch, a group of noise abused residents around Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.

Roelof is available for building your app too. Not free of charge of course, but if you have a need for a professional designed and built app, please do contact him via e-mail address r.meijer@officealley.nl.

This app collects data about aviation noise. Users measure the noise levels of airplanes that fly over. The data is stored in a central database.

The database will be used to publish reports about aviation noise. We aim to inform all stakeholders: politicians, press, residents, airports and airlines.

We need the following data:

• Date and time of the registration
  
• Identification number of the airplane
  
• Geographical location of the registration
  
• The peak noise level measured
• Make and model of the smartphone used for the registration
• Serial number of the smartphone
  

The data about the device used is necessary to be able to interprete results and to be able to calibrate the sound level afterwards, depending on the device used.

It is possible that from the collected data is learned that a certain device measures noise levels with a standard deviation. We are then able to correct these levels within a seperate column on our published data. Read more >

This app implements an idea of SchipholWatch, a group of residents around Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.

We feel that our complaints about the growing problem of aviation noise are not heard by the authorities and by our neighbour Schiphol.

SchipholWatch is an initiative of five entrepreneurs with different backgrounds (media, civil engineering, professional noise measurement, information technology and law).

Via social media and our website we aim to publish relevant information to fight the ever growing problem of aviation noise. Our ultimate goal is a relocation of Schiphol to a to be created island in the North Sea. Read more >

Please use our app outdoors. Measuring inside your home will ‘pollute’ our database with values that are at least 15 dB lower than the actual aviation noise level.

Beware of the wind. The microphone of your smartphone can be sensitive for strong winds. Please measure aviation noise preferably out of the wind.

Point your device’s microphone at the airplane during the sound measurement. If you do so you will register the most reliable noise level.

If you want to share our news articles that are shown in the app: please visit our weblog at https://cms.explane.org.

All the data gathered with the app is available via https://reports.explane.org.

Read more >

At https://reports.explane.org you will find all registrations made with the app. You can zoom in on the data that is important for your community.

We hope you will use the information to show your local, regional or national governments what impact aviation noise has on your communities. Take screenshots and publish them in your local news paper, on your social media or share them via Whatsapp or e-mail.

Also you can use the Explane data to provide journalists and other opinion leaders with information about aviation noise. Please share the website address as much as possible!

Users of Explane work together to show how much impact aviation has on our lifes. Please keep on making registrations so we can have a real impact! Read more >