Airfield Ratings in Turnpoint list naming convention

I will be updating my local turnpoint list soon, I was wondering if someone has already worked out a system of turnpoint naming for landable places that might be short, narrow or somehow useful for some gliders but not 18m+ etc.

It would be nice to include fields or ultralight runways etc that you could use if you were desperate - better than landing in forest but still challenging for one or more reasons.

I thought of naming the landing points something like:
Iffy
Risk01
Unconfirmed01
Short02
Narrow01
Dodgy
Desperate01
Marginal
Dubious
Doubt
Dicey
Tricky
Alert
Warn

Seems like if you could use a short word that communicated a warning and a number to make it unique in case you had several in the list and or some rating.
Short is good because some displays truncate names to 6 characters on screen.

It would be nice to see such information as length and width.

I realize you can't possibly measure every small strip, so I ask: How
can you say an airstrip is "Iffy", etc, without having stood on it?

Dan Marotta

On 6/20/2014 5:49 AM, wrote:
I will be updating my local turnpoint list soon, I was wondering if someone has already worked out a system of turnpoint naming for landable places that might be short, narrow or somehow useful for some gliders but not 18m+ etc.

It would be nice to include fields or ultralight runways etc that you could use if you were desperate - better than landing in forest but still challenging for one or more reasons.

I thought of naming the landing points something like:
Iffy
Risk01
Unconfirmed01
Short02
Narrow01
Dodgy
Desperate01
Marginal
Dubious
Doubt
Dicey
Tricky
Alert
Warn

Seems like if you could use a short word that communicated a warning and a number to make it unique in case you had several in the list and or some rating.
Short is good because some displays truncate names to 6 characters on screen.

A naming convention might be really useful here.

Also is there some agreed upon runway length that you can expect a cross country pilot to be able to use without either leaving it off the list or giving a warning? Surrounding trees/obstacles of course are a factor, but would 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200' be a minimum useful length?
[I have seen a good ASW27 pilot land on a paved runway and roll to a stop in ~125 feet, over no obstacles].

Chris

Perhaps a good idea to keep the ratings in the first few characters, as some older systems only allow 7 or 8 characters. Characters near the end may get removed.
Jim

On Fri, 20 Jun 2014 07:29:49 -0700, JS wrote:

Perhaps a good idea to keep the ratings in the first few characters, as
some older systems only allow 7 or 8 characters. Characters near the end
may get removed.
Jim

I think its better to add runway width & length to all landout fields.
You can get this information for most fields by using GoogleEarth's
measurement tool and you'll already have its co-ordinates because without
them the field is pretty much useless. Then, provide the user with both
the landout database and a tool to remove any fields that don't match his
personal requirements for width and length.

This can be done with a standard CUP turnpoint file because its
description field has no defined maximum length though some programs may
impose a limit.

Both LK8000 and XCSoar are said to limit the description to 250 chars in
CUP files though I'm certain I've supplied both with longer descriptions
without crashing them. However, both make no attempt to format this field
nicely. For this reason I prefer to use Winpilot files with a short (=15
chars) comment in the file and the arbitrarily long comment in the
Turnpoint description file that LK8000 and XCSoar both support.

Of course, that does mean that the landouts master file won't be a
standard Winpilot file but who cares as long as the runway size filter
program can also spit out the filtered landout list in a format that a
glider navigation instrument can use.

I've built such a tool to support my club's landout list plus the other
UK landout fields I know about: the master file is in a format that is
suitable for maintenance with any text editor. The filter program can
output the filtered data as either a CUP file or as Winpilot TP file plus
the associated TP description file.

The program has not yet been published because at present its more of a
programmer's utility program than an end-user's point-and-click tool but,
as its written in Java, it will run on just about any desktop box a
glider pilot is likely to own.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

Terrific!

I'll install google earth and try it out on some local fields that I'm
familiar with. With success, I'll update my turnpoint file.

Dan Marotta

On 6/20/2014 11:30 AM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Fri, 20 Jun 2014 07:29:49 -0700, JS wrote:

Perhaps a good idea to keep the ratings in the first few characters, as
some older systems only allow 7 or 8 characters. Characters near the end
may get removed.
Jim
I think its better to add runway width & length to all landout fields.
You can get this information for most fields by using GoogleEarth's
measurement tool and you'll already have its co-ordinates because without
them the field is pretty much useless. Then, provide the user with both
the landout database and a tool to remove any fields that don't match his
personal requirements for width and length.

This can be done with a standard CUP turnpoint file because its
description field has no defined maximum length though some programs may
impose a limit.

Both LK8000 and XCSoar are said to limit the description to 250 chars in
CUP files though I'm certain I've supplied both with longer descriptions
without crashing them. However, both make no attempt to format this field
nicely. For this reason I prefer to use Winpilot files with a short (=15
chars) comment in the file and the arbitrarily long comment in the
Turnpoint description file that LK8000 and XCSoar both support.

Of course, that does mean that the landouts master file won't be a
standard Winpilot file but who cares as long as the runway size filter
program can also spit out the filtered landout list in a format that a
glider navigation instrument can use.

I've built such a tool to support my club's landout list plus the other
UK landout fields I know about: the master file is in a format that is
suitable for maintenance with any text editor. The filter program can
output the filtered data as either a CUP file or as Winpilot TP file plus
the associated TP description file.

The program has not yet been published because at present its more of a
programmer's utility program than an end-user's point-and-click tool but,
as its written in Java, it will run on just about any desktop box a
glider pilot is likely to own.

At 14:17 20 June 2014, Dan Marotta wrote:
It would be nice to see such information as length and width.

I realize you can't possibly measure every small strip, so I ask: How
can you say an airstrip is "Iffy", etc, without having stood on it?

Look on Google Earth.

Dan Marotta

On 6/20/2014 5:49 AM, wrote:
I will be updating my local turnpoint list soon, I was wondering if
someone has already worked out a system of turnpoint naming for landable
places that might be short, narrow or somehow useful for some gliders but
not 18m+ etc.

It would be nice to include fields or ultralight runways etc that you
could use if you were desperate - better than landing in forest but still
challenging for one or more reasons.

I thought of naming the landing points something like:
Iffy
Risk01
Unconfirmed01
Short02
Narrow01
Dodgy
Desperate01
Marginal
Dubious
Doubt
Dicey
Tricky
Alert
Warn

Seems like if you could use a short word that communicated a warning
and
a number to make it unique in case you had several in the list and or
some
rating.
Short is good because some displays truncate names to 6 characters on
screen.

A naming convention might be really useful here.

Also is there some agreed upon runway length that you can expect a
cross
country pilot to be able to use without either leaving it off the list or
giving a warning? Surrounding trees/obstacles of course are a factor,
but
would 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200' be a minimum useful length?
[I have seen a good ASW27 pilot land on a paved runway and roll to a
stop
in ~125 feet, over no obstacles].

Chris

The Minden/Truckee database has had a standard terminology for some time - a single letter (e.g. "U" for unlandable) and a rating number (1-5) to rate the quality. Reasonably concise is better. Common standard is better.

I have always felt that the soaring community should create a standard repository that would collect user contributions of info such as landout field dimensions as well as other elements - photos (many glide computers have provision for these now), obstacles, potential for change in conditions (flooding of dry lakes) and most important, a time stamp and method for collecting the info (Google can't tell if a field is too rough or the height of scrub at the edge of the runway but walking the field can).

Could the WWTP exchange accommodate such a database? What would it take to create formats that could be easily used by glide computers - I'm thinking mostly of the photos. The current method is a bit labor-intensive.

9B

On Saturday, June 21, 2014 10:07:18 AM UTC-7, Tim Newport-Peace wrote:

And who will accept the responsibility for ensuring that it is always
up-to-date?

You mean compared to what we have today? In some ways anonymous contributions may be better than inaction out of the fear of legal liability.

My thought was an easy way to add info and photos with a date would allow for continuous improvement as people would feel encouraged to update landout locations that might seem subject to change (infrequently used grass or dirt strips, dry lakes, etc.) For instance, I just scouted a couple of marginal airfields at critical locations in the task area where there are few good places to land on my drive into the US 15M Nationals, complete with photos. There really is no easy way to provide that information for anyone else to use.

9B

A Wiki might do the trick; there are a number out there. Both the Worldwide Soaring Turnpoint Exchange and SeeYou support pictures at waypoints, as do many individual sites and probably other software.

John Leibacher

My concern is a related topic - the many coordinate errors in the FAA data base of airports. One airport I know of was listed at a position nearly 4 miles from its actual location! This is a problem, because in the eastern US it can be quite difficult to find a small grass strip in among the many farmers' fields. Another problem is that some airports that don't exist are also listed in the FAA data base.

John Liebacher and Lynn Alley can't really help, because the errors are coming from the FAA. I solved the problem by starting with a way point file from John Liebacher and verifying the location of each airport using Google Earth. Naturally, it took a long time to do this!

Perhaps, as John suggests, a Wiki would be a means of solving both this problem and the airfield rating problem which was the OP's concern.

However, might there be a liability issue with a Wiki? What happens if a farmer decides to plow under a grass strip? Or, what happens if a Wiki contributor identifies the wrong field on Google Earth as being the airfield?

-John, Q3

On Tuesday, June 24, 2014 1:23:17 PM UTC-4, wrote:
A Wiki might do the trick; there are a number out there. Both the Worldwide Soaring Turnpoint Exchange and SeeYou support pictures at waypoints, as do many individual sites and probably other software.

John Leibacher