Everything BalloonRadar does — broken down by who uses it and why it matters. No upsells. No premium tier. All of this is free.
Background GPS running on Flutter with a foreground service and screen wake-lock. The app never sleeps mid-flight, even on Android's most aggressive battery managers. Your position updates continuously — no gaps, no dark moments.
The green line extends forward based on your current speed and direction. It adjusts in real time — longer when you're moving fast and high, shorter as you slow down for landing. You always see where you're heading, not where you've been.
Vertical speed calculated from the barometer, not GPS. Barometric VSI is smoother and more reliable at low airspeeds. The instrument updates continuously and shows a dash when the sensor isn't available.
As you climb and descend, BalloonRadar records wind speed and direction at every 100 ft band. The profile updates live during flight, giving you a real picture of what the air is doing at each layer — useful for planning your descent and landing zone.
Every flight is automatically logged — departure time, landing time, total duration, distance flown, and maximum altitude. The log is stored to your account and retained for five years. Useful for the pilot's logbook and for incident documentation.
Download CTR, restricted, and prohibited zones for any country directly from OpenAIP. Zones appear on the map with colour coding. A proximity alert fires when you approach a CTR boundary — pilot-only, no noise for observers or drivers.
Long-press anywhere on the map to drop a hazard marker — power lines, a difficult field, standing water. Pins are visible to all pilots active in the area in real time. Mark it, warn others, move on.
Photograph your envelope during setup. Claude Vision analyses the shape, colours, and pattern and generates a custom SVG icon that represents your balloon specifically on the map. Every registered balloon looks different on the tracking screen.
Before you inflate, open the planner and select your take-off point. The AI fetches real wind data across eight altitude layers from 10 m to 3,000 m, then models three independent scenarios — a low steady flight, a dynamic climb-and-descend profile, and a high-level route. Each scenario is drawn on a satellite map as a colour-coded trajectory.
Planning a fly-in to a specific location? Enter the target coordinates and your intended arrival time. The AI calculates a reverse trajectory — where to take off from, when to inflate, and what the window looks like across the next three days. It accounts for crew travel time vs declared flight time.
Early versions of the planner only had reliable wind data to 180 m. The current version pulls pressure-level data at 1000 hPa, 925 hPa, 850 hPa, and 700 hPa — corresponding to roughly 100 m, 750 m, 1,500 m, and 3,000 m. At altitude, the trajectories are based on real atmospheric data, not interpolation from surface measurements.
Before the flight, the map shows an animated particle layer from Open-Meteo — wind direction and approximate speed visible as moving particles on the map surface. Useful for a quick directional sense before you open the full planner.
The observer view opens at balloonradar.com/app in any browser, on any device. Passengers, families, and ground crew see the balloon's live position, flight trail, current altitude, speed, and direction — no account, no install, no friction.
Subscribe to a pilot to receive a push notification the moment they take off or land. The notification includes the pilot's name, balloon registration, and a photo of the envelope. Works whether the app is open or closed.
All flight start and landing alerts appear in a notification centre within the app — a bell icon with a badge counter. Tap to see the full list. Mark all read when done. No notifications go missing even when the device was offline.
Each pilot's unique SVG balloon icon appears at their live position on the observer map. When multiple pilots are flying in the same area, each balloon is visually distinct — you know whose envelope you're looking at without reading a label.
The pilot generates a 6-character code at the start of the flight. The driver enters this code in the Driver tab to connect instantly — no account needed. The code is valid for 24 hours. Simple enough to type while standing in a field.
Once connected, the driver's screen shows the balloon's live position and a route from the driver's current GPS location to the balloon's predicted landing zone. As the balloon moves and the prediction updates, the route recalculates. The driver always knows where to head.
A compact bar at the top of the driver's screen shows the balloon's current altitude, speed, vertical speed, and distance from the driver. Updated in real time. Enough information to understand what the balloon is doing without being distracted from the road.
The driver role is entirely anonymous. Enter the code, follow the balloon, find a field, shake hands. Nothing to set up, nothing to log in to, nothing to remember next time.
BalloonRadar is free to download and free to use. No features are locked behind a subscription. If you fly balloons, this was built for you.