/plane-alert-db

A list of interesting aircraft - Governments, Dictators, Military, Historic and just plain odd.

Primary LanguagePython

plane-alert-db

This project consists of lists of 'interesting' aircraft, formatted as CSV files. The list is designed to work with the excellent https://github.com/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-planefence.

Warning Please only suggest/make any changes to the plane-alert-db.csv, plane-alert-pia.csv, plane-alert-ukraine.csv and plane_images.csv files on GitHub - all other files (except PIA) are generated from this file, and if you do not make your changes there, they will be overwritten and lost. Additionally, it is not recommended to edit the CSV files in Microsoft Excel, as Excel will attempt to "fix" some ICAO hexes and other fields. It's better to use a code editor such as VS Studio Code—you can access the web version of Code by pressing the period key . when viewing the file you wish to edit.

TOC

Current Content

There currently are about 14044 unique aircraft in 52 categories found in this repository. This Dashboard contains details of the main list and the most recent additions. These aircraft are divided into four main databases:

Based on these main databases, several derivative databases are created using a GitHub action:

A second version of each of the above lists contains up to 4 image links per aircraft. These lists are created in GitHub action using the plane_images.csv database. Please consider this experimental, do not come to rely on any of the image links

Note, we used to create a seperate list, plane-alert-twitter-blocked.csv, for use with Planefence's Twitter posting functionality. This list would prevent certain aircraft from being posted to Twitter in an attempt to keep the posting bot account from being banned. Since Twitter has now made it all but impossible for users to make bots for free, we've stopped creating this list.

This Dashboard contains details of the main and Ukraine lists.

Description of Categories

Think of categories like groups, with similar or related aircraft listed together. This allows you to easily select a subset of the list for your own use. The category names (and tags) come from my rather idiosyncratic sense of humour. If you have better suggestions I'm all ears.

Category Description Count
Aerial Firefighter Firefighting Aircraft 327
Aerobatic Teams Red Arrows, Blue Angels, etc. 77
Army Air Corps UK Army Air Corps, mainly Helicopters 94
As Seen on TV Companies and Brands 383
Big Hello Large Helicopters (sic) 104
Bizjets Fancy pants planes for fancy pants people 42
CAP Civil Air Patrol. 3
Climate Crisis Oil Companies, Large Business Jets - BBJs and ACJs 191
Coastguard Coastguard, Customs and Border Patrols 439
Da Comrade Russian or Soviet Aircraft 91
Dictator Alert People of potentially questionable morals and values 323
Distinctive Unique and/or special aircraft e.g. The AN-225 Myria, NASA aircraft, Testbeds 189
Dogs with Jobs Aircraft with specific roles and/or modifications 174
Don't you know who I am? Famous People. I was going to say notable, but I'll go with Famous 63
Flying Doctors Air Ambulance and Medical Flights 786
Football Actual, Aussie Rules or American. We don't discriminate. 9
GAF Aircraft of the German Air Force 407
Gas Bags Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon? 14
Governments Aircraft registered to Governments 252
Gunship Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt 261
Hired Gun Why do the dirty work when someone else can do it for you? 235
Historic It's older than I am and most likely has a prop. 412
Jesus he Knows me Aircraft owned and operated by religious organisations 20
Joe Cool Cool Planes. Or at least I think they are cool. 198
Jump Johnny Jump de Havilland Chipmunks. Air Cadets of a certain age will understand. 388
Nuclear Nuclear Emergency Support Team etc. 16
Oligarch I made this money all by myself. 41
Other Air Forces Air Force aircraft that are not GAF, RAF, or USAF 2002
Other Navies Navy Aircraft that are not Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm or United States Navy 199
Oxcart Intelligence gathering aircraft 649
Perfectly Serviceable Aircraft Why do you keep jumping out of a Perfectly Serviceable Aircraft aka Skydiving planes 44
PIA Privacy ICAO Address....you can run, but you cannot hide. 15
Police Forces Your friendly neighbourhood flying (insert local colloquialism here). 891
Ptolemy would be proud Mapping and Aerial Survey aircraft. 127
Quango NATO, United Nations, World Bank etc. 32
Radiohead Very Very special aircraft. Think VC25. 5
RAF Aircraft of the Royal Air Force 240
Royal Aircraft Aircraft used or owned by the UK Royal Family 8
Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Aircraft of the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm 97
Special Forces The best of the best of the best. Sir. 176
Toy Soldiers Armies from around the world. 753
UAV It's not natural, I tell 'ya! 33
UK National Police Air Service Your friendly neighbourhood flying bobby. 24
United States Marine Corps Aircraft of the United States Marine Corps, Oorah! 212
United States Navy United States Naval avaitors. Some say they are the best of the best. 338
USAF Aircraft of the United States Air Force 2247
Vanity Plate Distinctive registrations 74
Watch Me Fly Flying and Training Schools 75
You came here in that thing? Microlights, tiny planes and helis..think Yakima Super Breezy. 98
Zoomies Fast jets, fighters. Anything that moves fast. 134

Planefence

The list takes the form:

$ICAO $Registration $Operator $Type $ICAO Type #CMPG $Tag 1 $#Tag 2 $#Tag 3 Category $#Link
502C5C YL-KSH Baltic Bees display team Aero L-39C Albatross L39 Civ Do A Barrel Roll Display Team Aerobatics Aerobatic Teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Bees_Jet_Team

To use this list with Planefence, configure your planefence.config setup to include the following line:

PF_ALERTLIST=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sdr-enthusiasts/plane-alert-db/main/plane-alert-db.csv

If you want to add the list in addition to your local plane-alert-db.csv list, you can do the following:

PF_ALERTLIST=plane-alert-db.csv,https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sdr-enthusiasts/plane-alert-db/main/plane-alert-gov.csv,https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sdr-enthusiasts/plane-alert-db/main/plane-alert-pol.csv

Note The priority of use is first-to-last, so if you want your local list to be interpreted first, move it to the front of the list.

Add these characters to the column headers to control the behaviour of PlaneAlert

  • $ - Tweet this column as #hashtag.
  • # - Don't show on the website (it will ignore this for the ICAO field, which is always shown).
  • $# - Don't show on the website; tweet as a #hashtag.

Contributing

Feel free to open an issue if you have ideas on improving this repository or want to report a bug! All contributions are welcome 🚀. Please consult the contribution guidelines for more information. You can also check out the TODOS page if you want to contribute to this repository but need some ideas.

Warning As also explained above, this repository contains four main databases to which people can contribute. The other databases are created automatically using GitHub action. As a result, please only suggest/make any changes to these main databases. Changes made to all other CSV files will be overwritten and lost. Additionally, it is not recommended to edit the CSV files in Microsoft Excel, as Excel will attempt to "fix" some ICAO hexes and other fields. It's better to use a code editor such as VS Studio Code—you can access the web version of Code by pressing the period key . when viewing the file you wish to edit.

If you're creating a pull request with additions, please add them to the end of the file. We may sort the list periodically to group like planes together.

Disclaimer, excuses and dodges

This is not intended to be a definitive list, especially when it comes to aircraft models. Where the same model of aircraft is made by several manufacturers I won't always have the correct one. If you thought it was a Beechcraft King Air 200 and actually it was a Textron Super King Air B200GT, I won't be losing any sleep. There are other data sources (see below) if you want absolute accuracy.

Data Sources

This data has been gathered from far too many sources to mention, but some sites have been really useful: