I am pleased to announce the beta launch of a new on-line instrument
approach plate service at http://siap.awun.net/

This service collects all the plates you need for a trip into a single
PDF file. Try it out and let me know if you think it's useful.
(There's a feedback form at the end.) The service is, for the moment,
free of charge.

rg

In article >,
Ron Garret > wrote:

> http://siap.awun.net/

Why does the site require cookies?

It looks like a session ID cookie. It's not persistent across browser
restart. Very common when the web application is written using many
widely used framework.

-M

In article om>,
"M" > wrote:

> It looks like a session ID cookie.

That's right, it's just a session ID. At the moment I'm using it for
traffic monitoring so I can tell how many unique visitors I have to the
site. That in turn will help me figure out if I can make the thing
self-sustaining. I don't need to make a profit on it, but I do need to
make enough to cover the bandwidth costs. Approach plates are pretty
big documents.

> It's not persistent across browser
> restart. Very common when the web application is written using many
> widely used framework.

That's true, but in this case the site is written using a framework I
developed myself. The idea is to some day support advanced features
that require login accounts, like having the site keep track of which
plates you've already downloaded so that you can ask for all the plates
that have changed since the last time you downloaded them. The
infrastructure for creating and managing accounts is all there, just not
being used at the moment.

Just FYI,
rg

Ron Garret > wrote:

The service is, for the moment, free of charge.

So we can expect something similar to the $100 hamburger site?
Just kidding. Don't ban me.

Ron Lee

In article >,
(Ron Lee) wrote:

> Ron Garret > wrote:
>
> The service is, for the moment, free of charge.
>
> So we can expect something similar to the $100 hamburger site?

The server is paid for through the end of March, so all it will take to
keep it up and running until then is a little encouragement :-) After
that I need to figure out a way to pay for the bandwidth. (Because the
files are so large I need to run it out of an actual data center or
performance will be abysmal.) I'm hoping that Adsense ads will be
enough. It only needs to generate a couple of hundred dollars a month
to be self-sustaining. I'm not looking to make a huge profit on this,
but I don't want to have to subsidize it out of my own pocket either.

rg

Would it be easier for you to gather the charts from the AOPA site and
combine the PDF, that way you don't need to host the actual files. I go
to the AOPA site, download the .zip file and then use a PDF merge tool
to merge the charts into one PDF, then I can print them two to a page.

-Robert

Robert M. Gary wrote:
>
> Would it be easier for you to gather the charts from the AOPA site and
> combine the PDF, that way you don't need to host the actual files. I
> go to the AOPA site, download the .zip file and then use a PDF merge
> tool to merge the charts into one PDF, then I can print them two to a
> page.

Then it sounds like you won't be needing Ron's service since that's what
he's essentially offering. :)

Hosting the files themselves is cheap. It's paying the hosting provider for
the bandwidth that can get expensive.

--
John T
http://sage1solutions.com/TknoFlyer
http://pocketgear.com/products_search.asp?developerid=4415
____________________

In article >,
"John T" > wrote:

> Robert M. Gary wrote:
> >
> > Would it be easier for you to gather the charts from the AOPA site and
> > combine the PDF, that way you don't need to host the actual files. I
> > go to the AOPA site, download the .zip file and then use a PDF merge
> > tool to merge the charts into one PDF, then I can print them two to a
> > page.
>
> Then it sounds like you won't be needing Ron's service since that's what
> he's essentially offering. :)
>
> Hosting the files themselves is cheap. It's paying the hosting provider for
> the bandwidth that can get expensive.

Exactly. All the approach plates together take up only a couple of GB,
which is nothing by today's standards. But the resulting composite
files are huge (tens to hundreds of MB) so the service has to be hosted
at a real data center or it will be slower than molasses in February
(although I see that AOPA seems to have managed to compress the original
plates. I'll have to figure out how they did that.)

As for printing them two to a page, most printer drivers will let you do
that with any multi-page document. Is anyone having trouble printing
two to a page?

rg

The only trick to printed two to a page was to merge the PDFs. I don't
know how to print two to a page when the two are in different PDFs.
However, any off the shelf PDF merger seems to solve that problem (did
for me).

-Robert

On 1/4/06 3:18 PM, in article
, "Ron Garret"
> wrote:

> In article >,
> (Ron Lee) wrote:
>
>> Ron Garret > wrote:
>>
>> The service is, for the moment, free of charge.
>>
>> So we can expect something similar to the $100 hamburger site?
>
> The server is paid for through the end of March, so all it will take to
> keep it up and running until then is a little encouragement :-) After
> that I need to figure out a way to pay for the bandwidth. (Because the
> files are so large I need to run it out of an actual data center or
> performance will be abysmal.) I'm hoping that Adsense ads will be
> enough. It only needs to generate a couple of hundred dollars a month
> to be self-sustaining. I'm not looking to make a huge profit on this,
> but I don't want to have to subsidize it out of my own pocket either.
>
> rg

If you can get a regular flow of traffic, Adsense should be enough to meet
your goal, but it looks to me as if you'll need a few more pages with some
content to get it.
--
Jeff 'The Wizard of Draws' Bucchino

Cartoons with a Touch of Magic�
http://www.wizardofdraws.com

More Cartoons with a Touch of Magic�
http://www.cartoonclipart.com

Ron
Make an unsolicited proposal to the FAA about providing a service for the
users.
Al


"Ron Garret" > wrote in message
...
> In article >,
> (Ron Lee) wrote:
>
>> Ron Garret > wrote:
>>
>> The service is, for the moment, free of charge.
>>
>> So we can expect something similar to the $100 hamburger site?
>
> The server is paid for through the end of March, so all it will take to
> keep it up and running until then is a little encouragement :-) After
> that I need to figure out a way to pay for the bandwidth. (Because the
> files are so large I need to run it out of an actual data center or
> performance will be abysmal.) I'm hoping that Adsense ads will be
> enough. It only needs to generate a couple of hundred dollars a month
> to be self-sustaining. I'm not looking to make a huge profit on this,
> but I don't want to have to subsidize it out of my own pocket either.
>
> rg

Stan Gosnell wrote:
>
> Slight glitch. Your form only accepts 3-letter identifiers. Many
> airports, especially smaller ones, have 4-letter identifiers. I
> tried to input LS99 and several others, unsuccessfully.

While I admit that accepting four-letter ICAO identifiers is probably a good
idea, the point of Ron's site is to provide instrument approach procedures
in PDF format. LS99 doesn't appear to have any published approaches. Do
you have examples of airports you tried that do have IAPs?

--
John T
http://sage1solutions.com/TknoFlyer
http://pocketgear.com/products_search.asp?developerid=4415
____________________

In article >,
Stan Gosnell > wrote:

> Ron Garret > wrote in news:rNOSPAMon-
> :
>
> > I am pleased to announce the beta launch of a new on-line instrument
> > approach plate service at http://siap.awun.net/
> >
> > This service collects all the plates you need for a trip into a single
> > PDF file. Try it out and let me know if you think it's useful.
> > (There's a feedback form at the end.) The service is, for the moment,
> > free of charge.
>
> Slight glitch. Your form only accepts 3-letter identifiers. Many
> airports, especially smaller ones, have 4-letter identifiers. I tried to
> input LS99 and several others, unsuccessfully.

I fixed this, but you still won't be able to input LS99 because it has
no instrument approaches so it's not in my database. In fact, there are
only five airports with four-letter identifiers that have any instrument
approach plates associated with them at all, and most of those are
STARs, not approaches.

rg

In article >,
"Allan9" > wrote:

> Ron
> Make an unsolicited proposal to the FAA about providing a service for the
> users.
> Al
>

Not a bad idea. Is there a web page that describes the procedure for
submitting such a proposal? I tried a Google search to no avail.

rg

I don't beleive FAA charts exist for airports with 4 letter IDs. Once
you get big enough for an instrument approach you get 3 letters. I
could be wrong though.

-Robert

In article om>,
"Robert M. Gary" > wrote:

> I don't beleive FAA charts exist for airports with 4 letter IDs. Once
> you get big enough for an instrument approach you get 3 letters. I
> could be wrong though.

There are four airports with four-letter identifiers that have
instrument approach plates associated with them:

VA39 (FORT LEE HELIPAD NR. 3)
07FA (OCEAN REEF CLUB)
36MI (TECUMSEH PRODUCTS)
06FA (WILLIAM P. GWINN)

Of these, only two (06FA and VA39) actually have any approaches. The
others are just associated with STARs.

There used to be a fifth:

5KY3 (WEST KENTUCKY AIRPARK)

which had two GPS approaches, but they appear to have been
decommissioned.

rg

Ron Garret wrote

> There are four airports with four-letter identifiers that have instrument
> approach plates associated with them:

Very interesting. How did you find that out? I don't have a clue as to how
to do it.

Jon

In article >,
"Jon Woellhaf" > wrote:

> Ron Garret wrote
>
> > There are four airports with four-letter identifiers that have instrument
> > approach plates associated with them:
>
> Very interesting. How did you find that out? I don't have a clue as to how
> to do it.

PlateMate has a local database of all the instrument approach plates
(which it gets by crawling the NACO site), so I just ran a query on that
database.

Now, of course, I am going to have to kill you. ;-)

rg

Let me see if I can find something Maybe try searching for RFP's (Request
for Proposals) and use that format
Al


"Ron Garret" > wrote in message
...
> In article >,
> "Allan9" > wrote:
>
>> Ron
>> Make an unsolicited proposal to the FAA about providing a service for the
>> users.
>> Al
>>
>
> Not a bad idea. Is there a web page that describes the procedure for
> submitting such a proposal? I tried a Google search to no avail.
>
> rg

Nice site. There needs to be a way to turn off the plates one may not need
i.e. be able to turn off all GPS procedures, or RNAV procedures.
Otherwise looks good.
Bill Snow

"Ron Garret" > wrote in message
...
>I am pleased to announce the beta launch of a new on-line instrument
> approach plate service at http://siap.awun.net/
>
> This service collects all the plates you need for a trip into a single
> PDF file. Try it out and let me know if you think it's useful.
> (There's a feedback form at the end.) The service is, for the moment,
> free of charge.
>
> rg

Any way to get them to print at less than page size? Other than that
it's something I've been looking for for a long time!!