Large amounts of data!?!

[weavo]

Hi all, thanks for reading!

I have a quick data related question, does any one have any idea where I can obtain LARGE amounts of aviation data (historical and possibly a live stream)?  Because of my passion for aviation I plan to focus my MSc dissertation on Big Data & GIS techniques to analyse aviation data but the missing part of the puzzle is the data!  Being a student I am hoping this data is somehow freely available 

If someone could give me a few pointers that would be great!!

Thanks again,
Chris!

[Chris-G0WTZ]

I would suggest a well populated SQB file and use the SQL eitor in firefox
I am sure some one on the forum will have an SBS basestation.sqb at least 5 years old or more

[mezoo]

You dont say what type of data you are looking for
- aircraft data
- flight data
- both
- from anywhere or from a specific geographical region (e.g. airports)
- commercial, private or military traffic

Maybe you can present your ideas in more detail here on the forum.
I'm sure this topic would interest quite a lot of members.

To start it might also be an idea to collect your own data ;-)
My Radarcape with Planeplotter Reporting produces about 8 - 10 Mb a day of flight data which comes to about 60Mb a month when compressed in ZIP format.
Or (according to Flightaware) about 4500 plane movements and 270000 plane positions each day.

Any used ADSB receiver with a good antenna location should supply you with plenty of data to start off.
Even a cheap dongle will give you a steady stream of live data for testing.
Combined with a well or autopopulated basestation.sqb you will have live flight and aircraft data.

The software commonly used in this hobby collects and stores the data in simple formats (csv, sqb) which can be easily be imported into a large database. Some receivers even provide TCP ports with different data formats.

For "big data" your best bet would be to get one of the online radar sites interested in your project.
e.g. FR24, Planefinder, FlightAware, VRS Europe, libhomeradar. Some provide an API for data access - but these are not free.

I'm sure they could literally drown you in data.

Good luck.