After playing a few battles and getting curb-stomped, I decided to do a little digging via Google, and what I found disgusted me.
This is a fun little game where you can collect WWII-style aircraft identification cards, but for real-world aircraft as they are flying in the sky right now. Living as a do within sight distance of Alliance Fort Worth Airport (and close enough to DFW, Love Field, and Meacham to easily grab things there … even Sheppard AFB is within “Radar Extender” range!), I get a kick out of popping open the app when I hear unusual engine noise.
What blew my mind during the 21st Century-themed battles last week, though, was how often I’d come up against opponents with ultra-rare Cyber-level planes. If you didn’t know, that is the ultimate card level upgrade that comes after Platinum.
This game came out in 2024. Look at planes such as Lockheed Martin’s X-59 Quesst. It took its first flight in October of 2025. I find it really hard to believe that one could have caught it enough to advance it to Cyber level - especially with 2-3 million XP just on that one plane alone!
Turns out there are cheats and hacks, and there are a lot of people in the game using them!
There exist modified automated package kits available for Android that allow you to do things like spawn aircraft (include those for which there are no longer any flight-worthy models), inflate your coin balance, and bypass the live mapping systems. Some users even figured how to manipulate the Flightradar24 servers themselves, giving them the ability to automate simulated plane captures without using the mobile app at all!
The battles can be fun, but the rampant cheating I’ve seen really sours me on the idea of them.
Well, I’ve been on the official Discord in a channel about battles. There’s a good discussion there about balancing players. I think the original assumption was that the bet levels would be a way to weed out the heavy hitters, but it’s not really working. I get demolished by folks that hang around in the 5 coin games and it can be disheartening. I know when someone rolls in with a cyber-level Santa that it’s not gonna go my way.
That’s just it. SkyCards debuted in 2024. Since then, there have been only two Christmases - the only time someone could actually get ADS-B data on Santa. Even if Santa were worth, say 10,000 XP, a player would have to have captured him 75 times across those two days just to get him to Cyber status at 750K XP.
I’ve been in battle against planes worth less than that with upwards of 2.5M - 3M XP - planes that are about as rare as Santa and don’t visit nearly as many good little boys and girls around the world as he does.
It’s my understanding we’re supposed to report such incidents to support, accompanied with screenshots that include the offender’s screen name. Unfortunately, this week’s Battles theme is “gliders”, and I don’t even have enough gliders in my deck to make a hand of five cards to play with.
I haven’t been playing long enough to see Santa, but I believe it’s just one flight per year, and people are saving their “catch agains” to grind that particular flight.
The battle mismatch thing I think is going to be addressed by a matching system that looks at XP levels and does some clever pairing, but I’m not 100% on that. I actually really like the battles as the deck building against the week’s objective is fun and gives a purpose to all the collecting.
For whatever my opinion is worth as someone who 1) has been playing SkyCards for almost a year and a half and 2) hunts for aircraft to progress myself towards trophies in the game, I almost never battle. I will never get the trophies for battling, and I’m OK with that.
If you’re after T-38s and T-6s, the 80th Flying Training Wing out of Sheppard AFB is always flying them around Wichita Falls, and they frequently fly down to Fort Worth Alliance and back.
Alliance is also a massive distribution center for both Amazon and FedEx, and, while American Airlines has moved most of its maintenance to other locations (primarily to Mexico, I heard), there are plenty of other aircraft coming in and out constantly.
We don’t get airshows here any more, so no more Blue Angels or Thunderbirds, but, as I mentioned upthread, we do occasionally get a visit from Fifi and other military craft both active and retired.
The only problem is that some of the military craft do not subscribe to ADS-B, or at least if they do, they have it scrubbed from Flightradar24. We commonly see UH-60s and F-18s - probably from the NASJRB in Fort Worth - but they don’t show up in the game.
Finally, there is a penchant here for using a Sikorsky S-58 as a crane to lower roof-mounted HVAC units onto the roofs of the obscenely large warehouses and distribution centers in the area. One or more always seem to be under construction at any given time, so I’m keeping a sharp lookout for that helicopter!
P.S. - I wanted to include some nifty images from my stash of Alliance pics, but my image hosting service is down right now. Maybe next time!
Just for entertainment value, next time you’re aware of military aircraft in the area that don’t appear on FR24, check adsbexchange.com to see if they’re shown there. If they aren’t on adsbx, then they really have their ADS-B units off.
Patuxent River NAS is good for grabbing US Navy Aircraft - there’s an E-2 Hawkeye and T-38 Talon flying around as I type this.
I’m one flight away from getting my Continental Drifter trophy, I just need to snag a flight to Antarctica! It’s winter there now, so that might be a while.
I’m trying for the Scarce trophy, so last week I did a search and there were a few aircraft I needed in South Texas. So, yesterday I completed the tasks for the airport in Houston so I can visit that all week. This morning, I happened to notice the T-38 and it was only a few coins to visit San Antonio and Corpus Cristi. There are still an Air Tractor and a helicopter or two I’d like to get before the week expires.
Ooh, just checked again and got a Martin WB-57 (12.56) south of Houston; think it’s from NASA.
I’m not sure where and when the Antarctica flights show up, but I’ll start looking for them at some point.
Pretty sure that NASA is the only operator of those.
In 1983, the USAF opted to retire the type; the B-57 Canberra’s retirement marked the ending of the era of the tactical bomber. The three remaining flightworthy WB-57Fs are technically assigned to the NASA Johnson Space Center, next to Ellington Field in Houston, as high-altitude scientific research aircraft but have also been used for testing and electronic communications in the United States and Afghanistan.
Semi-related, I got a U-2 yesterday recently out of Palmdale. That was cool.
USAF currently conducts pilot training at 4 locations. As you say, Sheppard AFB at Wichita Falls in Texas is one. The others are Laughlin AFB at Del Rio Texas, Vance AFB at Enid Oklahoma, and Columbus AFB at Columbus Mississippi.
From each of those bases you can find another AFB maybe 100-200 miles distant and you can expect to find some few of their T-6s and T-38s going to and from that other nearby base most days.
Saw a cluster of helicopters near Boston, so I zoomed in to check it out. Three news choppers and one state police; must have been something going on in Tewksbury, today.
Saw that WB-57 again, and I caught him just before landing.
At least one of my T-38s was NASA. I wonder if there was an astronaut flying it
