+ in Reg(stration)

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 A fellow avgeek in Ireland read my 'Death the hyphen. Long live the hyphen!' blog and reminded me that he and I exchanged DM's a few years back at our mutual frustration of those registrations that have a + in them.
I had totally forgotten, but it all came rushing back like a bad dream.

Indeed, what a pain in the site search page they are.

What should we do fellow agveeks?

The scope of the problem.

I did a quick and dirty search of the ADSB community database the site uses (reminder, the mictroncis one):
"select reg from airframes where reg like '%+%';"

I got 281 results.
A quick screenshot of some random returns:


And if you hit the site search, some show up, some don't.
Here is one that did.


BTW, this is a really big part of why I have the 'you searched' section at the bottom. It doubles as an airframes look up. Did you notice that? Drop a comment on this blog either way.

I've actually had a DM from a site mega power user about how this section will need a face-lift (do over) once we get the hyphen / Iridium stuff rolled out through the site - a blog for a future time.

Ok, it's clear you MUST put the + in the reg to get the results you want / expect.
How many of you knew that?
How often have you searched for a reg with a + in it?

The issue my IE mate pointed out is that you CANT remove the +... Here is the example he used:

3F97FD 15+04 German Air Force Airbus A321
48D8E3 1504 Polish Air Force Lockheed C-130E Hercules

If you remove the + you get a TOTALLY different aircraft.
As 'luck' would have it, if you search those two reg codes on the site right now, you get hits for both.
VDL and HFDL.

Not only, but also, most tar1090 map pages have this + issue messed up.

What a mess.....

I guess the issue is does Iridium include any + in registration codes?
I've not noticed them - yet.

I think we need to keep the + even deep in the site code. Unlike the hyphen.

Comments

  1. MikeBMarch 16, 2025 at 10:13 AM

    easy enough to capture a large dataset from the reassembler output and grep for '+'. i can do that on my feed if it helps

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. tbgMarch 16, 2025 at 1:00 PM

      Thanks for the offer Mike. It give me the though to quickly add a filter on my main iridium firehose. So don't action anything on your end, my UK/Euro feeds are far more likely to catch something.
      From what DM's I've had so far, it seems that its exclusively German Air Force use only.
      So we should be good to keep it and not nuke it anytime we see it (unlike the hyphen).
      I will let my Iridium + debug filter run a few days and see if we catch any at all.

      Delete
  2. AnonymousMarch 16, 2025 at 12:07 PM

    Well yes of course you must use the + if that is what the regd is. The registration is the defining factor of the aircraft, it's fixed, particularly for military aircraft. So hyphens and "+" should always be used if they appear in the registration. The ICAO/HEX code is not fixed, some mil aircraft have 2 codes, some SAM flights use a false ICAO code to hide their identity but the registration remains the same - most AvGeeks will only use the registration as a quick search of the forums will tell you

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. tbgMarch 16, 2025 at 1:06 PM

      Thanks for the comment. Always interesting to hear many voices on the same question.
      I am going to keep the +, but will stick to the plan to nuke the - since its use is not consistent with Iridium.... But only on the website backend code. As far as the user will know, the - will show up as needed.
      As for general reg code us, I've found about a 50:50 split. A lot of AVGEEK do not use the registration since its somewhat tricky and messy. Most use the hex.
      Those that do use reg swear by it.
      I guess the 50:50 split is why I am working hard to do keep both sides happy.
      I will do my best to tie-up hex to reg on the site db as best as the ACARS will let me.

      No way am I going to start to keep a custom db outside of ADSC dual hex and Iridium registrations.
      For everything else, the usual ways of informing mictronics/ADSB community of db updates should be the main course of action.

      Delete

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