By Chip Keen, Lead Commissioner, Clallam County Fire Protection District 6

The sound of an airplane or helicopter flying overhead is rare enough here on the West End to make you bother to look up when you hear one. More often than not, unless it’s a Coast Guard helicopter or a Navy EA-18G Growler, all you can do is guess about who it might be. That’s no longer the case.

Starting in 2020, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) required aircraft operating in U.S. airspace to be equipped with an Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) tracking system that broadcasts the craft’s position, altitude, speed, and other data to ground stations and other aircraft. This information enables air traffic controllers to better track and manage aircraft and generally improve situational awareness.

Anyone who has the initiative and wherewithal can build and install an ADS-B ground station and then feed the data to a web platform such as ADS-B Exchange. There are approximately 700 official ADS-B ground stations in the U.S. operated by the FAA but the number of amateur stations reaches into the thousands.

Although most ADS-B ground stations serve major airports, airports in less-populated areas play a critical role when aircraft emergency services are activated for wildfires, search and rescue operations and aviation emergencies. To this end, the Washington State Department of Transportation Emergency Services Program and Clallam Fire District 6 have installed an ADS-B ground station at the District 6 firehall at 3 Rivers to provide coverage of both the Forks and the Quillayute airports.

The next time you wonder who might be flying overhead, where they came from, and where they are headed, pull up https://globe.adsbexchange.com/ on the web browser of your choice and check them out.