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There are a few perks compared to just using flightradar24.
FR24 delays its feed by a few minutes to comply with various laws so its always a little out of sync. If you operate your own station you have access to realtime data. I'm an FR24 contributor, I feed my data to them and they give me "professional" access to their site in return. All of their data is crowd sourced by amateurs like me. Here's my FR24 contributor page:
https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/Stonehedge#stats-122350
I listen to some stuff. Not so much airband, its pretty boring most of the time. I'm a lapsed radio amateur (license expired over ten years ago) with an interest in aviation and satellite communications so I use a scanner and SDR radio for various hobby level experiments. I grabbed a few packets from the ISS as it flew over a bit earlier.
The nerd in me is strong. Half of the fun of being a radio amateur is building your own rigs and antennas and seeing how far you can communicate, sometimes using atmospheric conditions to your advantage. Back when I was active, I think my record was a contact from London to Kiev, bouncing a signal off the troposphere. Which leads me on to why I have an ADSB/MLAT setup.
Running my own ADSB station scratches my continual itch to build new antennas and see how efficient I can make a setup. ADSB operates on 1090 MHZ which presents its own challenges for receiving. Signals can only really be line of site so you get a pretty good idea what your maximum theoretical range is using a few simple calculations. For me, setting my ADSB up to receive the best possible range of aircraft from a 2nd floor flat window was a good learning experience.
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Stonehedge
What are the benefits to using one of these against Flightradar24. Do you mount aerial on the roof or in the loft?
Do you listen aswell? is so on what? that is good for subarban situations.
tia