Electronic Airport Facility Directories ("A/FDs")

On 2006-04-07, Roy Smith wrote:
Justin Gombos wrote:

I'll start with a rant; it's disturbing to find that the Department
of Transportation ("DOT") does not release the AFDs in a useable
digital format.

Of course they do.

Have a link for that?

Where do you think places like Airnav get their data from?

I don't think Airnav gets the information from DOT - I think they get
it from the FAA.

True, it's not 100% of everything that's in the AF/D, but it's most
of it.

I doubt that getting "most of it" adequitely complies with FAR 91.103.

The FAA has been getting steadily better about stuff like this.

Perhaps, but the DOT seems to be stuck in the 80s.

You can download PDFs of all the approach plates. You can download
sectionals. You can download the entire nav database (every
airport, fix, navaid, airway, etc, in excruciating detail). You
just have to do your homework to find it.

In that case, consider this thread "my homework".

The DOT cannot legally copyright the AFD, so AFAIK anyone is free
to tear the binding off, scan it, and redistribute it. Is anyone
doing this?

Of course somebody could do it. But I can't imagine anybody would
want to. Scanned images of the pages??? It's hard to think of a
more bizarre way to waste perfectly good electrons.

Fortunately, machines and electrons don't get tired. Drop a stack of
papers on an ADF, and it will go until the stack is empty. The cost
of a few electrons? You can figure it's negligable (and cheaper than
the material wasted in the production of the green book).

If you want to play lawyer games, keep buying the green book. If
you simply want to get the useful information you need to conduct
your flight safely, go to Airnav, or places like it. If you think
you can do a better job than Airnav, go download the raw data, spend
$9.99 to register a domain name, and go into competition with them.

Call them spoiled, but some pilots might want to be both practical
(that is, making use of electronic AFDs) and lawful at the same time.
Are you saying this isn't possible?

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