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Papers

How it works, and how it was built

Project Flys Down is a no-fly-zone detector for live air traffic: it reads the ADS-B reports aircraft broadcast about themselves and warns before one enters restricted airspace, not after. These are the full write-up and the short version.

The first page of the white paper
White paper · PDF

How the system works, why it is built this way, and how it was built

The full account, with every load-bearing claim tagged as measured, documented or standard, and a source for each.

  • How ADS-B works, and every field used with the reason for it
  • The detection engine: projection, zones, emergencies, landings
  • Why the free ADS-B services refuse cloud servers, and the relay built around it
  • Route data measured wrong seven times in ten, and the checks that catch it
  • Directing an AI coding agent, the defects found in use, and lessons learned
The cover slide
Slides · PDF

The short version

The same story as a set of square slides, made for reading on a phone: what it does, the hard parts, and what the numbers came to.