Type codes in the database

[DaveReid]

I think using UK in the previous message is technically incorrect as the range of radio prefixes and country codes that use the 'UK' allocation are those from the UK and British Commonwealth.
The G-, M-, VP- and other callsign prefixes also stem from the UK and British Commonwealth allocations from the ITU  decades ago!!!

The range of codes listed against "United Kingdom" in ICAO Annex 10, Volume III, Part I, Table 9-1 is indeed shared with Bermuda and the Caymans (both British Overseas Territories) and the Isle of Man (a Crown Dependency), but not of course with the Commonwealth as a whole since the independent countries that make up the latter each have their own allocation.

[DaveReid]

Thanks Dave, we will clarify that paragraph so it talks about change in operators.

I note that you have changed it so that it now reads:

"Mode-S IDs can also change there link to registrations. Example G-EUUT could go out of service and then 401240 is assigned to G-ELLB (In rare cases, usually the Mode-S link to registration stays the same).  Or an aircraft is leased/bought by another company. This will mean the aircraft details (whether registration or operator) in your local database will be wrong."

But it's still a poor example regarding registrations.  You would be better to use the relatively common scenario of a UK G-registered aircraft changing to another G- registration.  In such cases, the Mode S code doesn't change, but the registration does - in other words that's a valid example of the link between a code and a registration changing.

[Brian]

AirNav Support,
I can't find these ("BC-A", "BKC5", "BKC3") ICAO codes on that site.  Can someone provide a direct link please. So I know where AirNav got them as I learn the database some more.

Brian,
The ICAO codes are in the actype table in the database. As Dave mentioned the site below can give you a quick view of what they mean.
http://www.icao.int/anb/ais/8643/index.cfm

For more information on the two sources.  Maybe you can explain this on that new FAQ page "Untitled" vs "Tie-up extracted from Country Sequence"
One of the AirNav Support person has done it before on a regular topic.  It should be added to that new FAQ page.

[ACW367]

Brian
The BC-A, BKC codes etc are not ICAO codes and are not coming from either GAS or Airliners.net.  What we are still trying to understand is where the codes came from originally and whether Airnav can find them in their dataset and do another pull from GAS to get the correct codes ICAO codes displayed against the aircraft on that site or change them themselves manually even if that is to the '...' code.

Another regularly appearing spurious code that I have just remembered is BE- for US Navy E6A Mercury aircraft.

On the network I just had AE0414 populate as 164387 with the non-ICAO (or IATA) code of BE-, I went immediately to GAS and of course they have the correct ICAO code E6. I will do the manual change as I seem to have done for every E6, KC-135, C-40 etc recieved so far on my box.

This also occurs for some civil aircraft types notably Boeing 777-300ER.  When a new one appears Airnav populates with B773 which is not the ICAO code for the 300ER. GAS has the correct code of B77W.

This happened today for me with brand new Air Austral aircraft F-ONOU. It populated on my box as a B773 but GAS is showing it correctly as a B77W. This aircraft only flew for the first time a few days ago so the pull must have come from GAS and not from a legacy airnav dataset from an earlier release, so how did the code get supplanted/corrupted???

Confused of High Wycombe
Regards
ACW

[Brian]

I asked that on Page 2. and AirNav Support said to go look on that site for it.
but that didn't work out to well....

Look at my last post on page 2.

"Another question.  Where did these codes(BC-A, etc. see first post) that is showing up in the radarbox database come from.  Do you have a link to learn more about it."

[AirNav Support]

Thats not exactly what we said, we were answering your question related to you finding out more about icao codes, not specifically that's where we got these codes from.

[ACW367]

Airnav support

I agree with Brian, and tried to explain this in February and reinforce it with my post 11.  As you say the FAQ you created does not answer this issue that we are explaining, where many aircraft including newly registered ones have full details and correct ICAO codes on GAS but we get a corrupted ICAO code or the three dots supplanted when taken onto your servers onto our Navdatas.

I.E when a brand new aircraft is correctly reported in GAS like F-ONOU showing as B77W there.  That info must be taken forward to your server, however when we pull the info from your server as the aircraft appears on our box we get a corrupted code of B773.  Or the many examples where GAS have the full ICAO code but we get the dreaded Three dots.

All we are looking for is for you to say that you will investigate whether there is a corruption/supplanting of a few specific aircraft codes on your servers from a third unknown source after you have pulled the correct ICAO ones from GAS. Whether you can think of likely sources and if not whether you will investigate this as a bug for future software releases beyond V2.1

[Brian]

AirNav Support,
Simply, answer this question, where did you get that ("BC-A", "BKC5", "BKC3") from ?

So us radarbox user can contact that souce and get it corrected.

You are making it very hard to find the source and get it corrected for other radarbox users.

[DaveReid]

AirNav Support,
Simply, answer this question, where did you get that ("BC-A", "BKC5", "BKC3") from ?

So us radarbox user can contact that souce and get it corrected.

You are making it very hard to find the source and get it corrected for other radarbox users.

I agree - what's so hard about validating the type codes in the master AirNav database against the valid values from the ICAO website ?

[AirNav Support]

Ok Firstly there has been some confusion in this thread. We orginally assumed that you meant the BC-A values were in the actype table in the database not that they are being passed through for aircraft details when a new aircraft is found.

As explained in the FAQ, data comes from either GAS, Airliners.net or data in the database which was compiled from various other static sources at the time of the database build. (No we don't know the exact source of these static database per aircraft)

ACW367, We are investigating the 777 issue you have mentioned, it could be that the data came from airliners.net.

As mentioned in the FAQ, We are looking into the database system and making it sure its kept as accurate as possible without the whole process of updating being complicated.

[AirNav Support]

The BC-A etc.. is a strange one as there not even in the main database as a actype. There not in the RB local database either.

Meaning there probably likely old stale data from the past.

This leads on to our headache, if we have one database which feeds from airliners, gas, something else in the future. Which one do we take as the most accurate data how does main database know which one to choose (especially when some don't have timestamps to show the last updated time)

[Brian]

Okay what static database sources did you use for anything ?.
So us radarbox users can contact them about it.

As explained in the FAQ, data comes from either GAS, Airliners.net or data in the database which was compiled from various other static sources at the time of the database build. (No we don't know the exact source of these static database per aircraft)

[jgrloit]

I think that the validation of aircraft type should be extended to the vetting and validation of data from ANY source that is going to effect the aircraft type - both the Type code and the type string.
At present the correct data could be received from GAS via AirNav Servers, and the Aircraft type sting - long description, the string can then be overwritten by data attached to the Photograph, received.
The latter should be prevented - IF it does NOT match, to some degree that in the table for the ICAO type.
It becomes a question - who has the more valid data?   I would suggest GAS!!!

[AirNav Support]

Brian, It doesn't matter what they were as they only used once to populate the database. They are not part of any future updates to the database.

[Brian]

I just want to know for information.  So I can also check out that website/source.
I just love to read stuff.  So where can I get that information.  Just trying to learn more about it.

All I need is a link.