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Wing flies from a small number of US and Australian sites, along repeated routes between a depot and the addresses it serves. A receiver near one of those corridors hears the same aircraft often; a receiver a few miles off it hears none at all.

What it looks like

Airframe

Hybrid VTOL — a straight wing with a tail, plus rotors for hovering.

The tell

It never lands. A Wing aircraft arrives, stops, holds a hover well above the garden and lowers the package on a line, then reels the line up and leaves. Almost nothing else in civil airspace behaves that way, and the behaviour is easier to recognise than the airframe.

Sound

Two distinct notes rather than one: a higher hover pitch while it holds station, dropping to a steadier tone as it transitions to forward flight and goes.

How its broadcast names it

Aircraft sold in the US since September 2023 must broadcast Remote ID in the clear. Part of that broadcast is a serial number in the ANSI/CTA-2063-A format, which begins with a four-character manufacturer code. Every Wing Aviation airframe starts with 1633:

1633501046  →  1633 identifies the maker, the rest is theirs to assign.

That is a property of the standard rather than a guess, so anyone receiving the same broadcast can check it. A Raspberry Pi and two USB adapters are enough to read it yourself.

What one receiver actually recorded

Not enough, here. This receiver has logged 37 contacts with Wing Aviation aircraft — too few to say anything honest about how they fly, and more a statement about where this one antenna sits than about the aircraft. The identification above does not depend on that: it is a description of the airframe and of the broadcast standard, and it holds wherever you are.

This section fills in on its own once the record is worth quoting. It is left empty rather than padded, because a typical height drawn from a handful of contacts would look like a finding and be an anecdote.

Watch your own airspace

The receiver is a Raspberry Pi, a Bluetooth adapter and a Wi-Fi adapter. It listens only, transmits nothing, and what it hears stays private to your account unless you choose to share it.

How to build one →  ·  Parts list