Community maintained UAV hex list

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I have a strong interest in UAV's (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle aka drones).
I built and flew radio controlled aircraft for many years in Australia, did custom avionics builds for many 1/4 scale aerobatic RC aircraft and custom built and repaired racing drones here in California for a few years.

Having this strong interest made adding a single button that recalls a list of ADSB UAV hex codes to my trackmap page a no brainer.


This blog post builds on the one I posted a few weeks back on the ADSB community database (that YOU maintain), but also ties in how the mictronics database 'type' field can be used.

I started building the list on V1 of my website, sometime around the end of 2021 as I can see I was looking for UAV hex codes here around Feb 2022 on Twitter.
BTW, Evergreen Intel is now mostly active on @vcdgf555.bsky.social as is Amelia Smith @ameliairheart.bsky.social

The list was quickly fleshed out by using the 'type' field in the community database.
I found the list of types, then ran with this collection in the URL:
type codes = ["Q4","Q9","HRON", "Q1","Q25","FRBD", "FFLO", "VFHC", "SOL1", "SOL2","ANKA","DRON", "UAV"];

I grabbed all the hex codes that were tagged with those types.
That got things off to a great start pretty quickly.
From there a few folks in the avgeek community have stepped up and tagged me in social media posts (and a few DMs) with any UAV's they find that the community has not  (yet) added to the database.
An easy way to tell if they might have been added is to look at the 'type' code. If its n/a (not available) then it might not be in the mictronics db (yet). If that's the case, you really should get it added.

When I get a @thebaldgeek tag, I always double check if the hex is already in that list by jumping on my trackmap page, clicking the UAV button, click once in the list, then hit ctrl +a to select them all, then ctrl +c to copy them to my clipboard.
I always seem to have a tab open to this duplicate word finder where I paste in the main list in.
Then I go back to the message with the 'new' hex code, copy it and paste it into the start of the list.



As you can see, I have a pretty quick way to check for these hex codes as they come in.
Its really no trouble for me to check. I've got quite fast at this duplicate check work flow.
I'd much rather check it and see we already have it than miss it. 

Please don't stop tagging me in any UAV's you find!

If the tagged hex is not in the list, I then hit up my Node-RED editor, add it to the front of the list and push the update to the website.

The whole process takes me under a minute.

That right there is how we have one of the most current and complete listings of UAV hex codes in one location.

Thanks for reading and for your support.


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