I'm buying your sectionals for a year.

Not long ago, in rec.aviation.student,
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e....com&frame=off
I learned that the FAA is now selling scanned sectional chart DVDs.
http://www.naco.faa.gov/index.asp?xm...ctional_Raster

At over $300/year for each of the East and West sets, it sounded like
many potential users wouldn't get to touch them. That would be a shame.

I've wanted the data for a long time too, so I decided to get it and
make it available to everyone.
http://aviationtoolbox.org/raw_data/FAA_sectionals/

I'm hoping to provide a bunch of tools to manipulate these (and other)
data sets, but that'll take awhile so I'm offering the raw data for
now. I'll probably move it around later, but I'll make sure it's easy
to find.

Note that the East and West data sets only take 2.7GB, so even with
the Alaska set, a single DVD has plenty of space for all of this (and
the ATA-100 data and an operating system...). Is anyone interested
in DVDs like that? I'm thinking that I'll donate these DVDs to Purdue.
The Computer Society there makes copies of various CDs as a fund raiser
and I'd try to get them to start making DVDs of these data sets if
people would pay enough to make it worthwhile.

I'll try to get some tools going soon. I'll also be configuring to
allow other people to write their own tools on my server and access
everything remotely through XML-RPC.

Enjoy!

--kyler

Kyler Laird writes:

I've wanted the data for a long time too, so I decided to get it and
make it available to everyone.
http://aviationtoolbox.org/raw_data/FAA_sectionals/

Very nice -- I hope you don't get burned up on the bandwidth because
of your generosity.


All the best,


David

In rec.aviation.student Kyler Laird wrote:
I learned that the FAA is now selling scanned sectional chart DVDs.
....
I've wanted the data for a long time too, so I decided to get it and
make it available to everyone.
http://aviationtoolbox.org/raw_data/FAA_sectionals/

*boggle* I'm not sure which is more shocking - that the FAA would sell
scanned sectionals at all or that somebody would put them up for free
download. THANK YOU!

If you are at all worried about the bandwidth, you might want to set
up BitTorrent on your server: http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/

Regards,
Boris

Borislav Deianov writes:

*boggle* I'm not sure which is more shocking - that the FAA would sell
scanned sectionals at all or that somebody would put them up for free
download.

Neither should be shocking. Both should be *expected*. We (taxpayers)
pay for this data collection, right?

THANK YOU!

You're welcome. I'll be thrilled if people find it useful.

BTW, I decided to finally move the ATA-100 data and my old (ug, Perl)
interface over to the same server.
http://aviationtoolbox.org/old/ATA-100/
I find that data to be almost as interesting as the sectionals but I
think it's really going to get interesting when they're combined.

If you are at all worried about the bandwidth, you might want to set
up BitTorrent on your server: http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/

Thank you for the suggestion. BitTorrent is great and, of course,
anyone is welcome to inject this data into it, but I hope some thought
will go into some sort of versioning so that updates will easily
propagate. It shouldn't be necessary though. I got this server with
the intent of serving up useful stuff like this without worrying about
bandwidth usage (as I do with my other colo).

plug
This one is hosted at FDC Servers.
http://www.fdcservers.net/dedicated.html
The bandwidth is "unmetered." If it does bog down, I'll try to upgrade
to a faster plan.
/plug

Seriously...enjoy! No worries.

--kyler

Kyler Laird writes:

*boggle* I'm not sure which is more shocking - that the FAA would sell
scanned sectionals at all or that somebody would put them up for free
download.

Neither should be shocking. Both should be *expected*. We (taxpayers)
pay for this data collection, right?

We taxpayers in the rest of the world also pay for our governments'
geodata collection, but we see precious little of the result unless we
pay a lot of money. I know that we non-Americans don't always have
nice things to say about your country, but I think this is one area
where the U.S. is decades ahead of the rest of the world.

For example, my handrolled Canadian GPS airport and navaid database
comes from U.S. DAFIF data, since the U.S. publishes *far* more free
data for Canada than the Canadian government does. The new 3
arcsecond SRTM elevation data coming out is more than adequate for a
real-life, worldwide aviation terrain-avoidance system (or will be,
once it's all been checked), and the U.S. government is also releasing
it for free. I could go on and on, but I try not to gush online.


All the best,


David

HA! Won't Boeing/Jepp love that. The industry needs the competition,
but we might hear about Kyler's brakes failing while he drives around
a slippery mountain curve one day!


On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 01:08:26 GMT, Kyler Laird
wrote:

Not long ago, in rec.aviation.student,
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e....com&frame=off
I learned that the FAA is now selling scanned sectional chart DVDs.
http://www.naco.faa.gov/index.asp?xm...ctional_Raster

At over $300/year for each of the East and West sets, it sounded like
many potential users wouldn't get to touch them. That would be a shame.

I've wanted the data for a long time too, so I decided to get it and
make it available to everyone.
http://aviationtoolbox.org/raw_data/FAA_sectionals/

I'm hoping to provide a bunch of tools to manipulate these (and other)
data sets, but that'll take awhile so I'm offering the raw data for
now. I'll probably move it around later, but I'll make sure it's easy
to find.

Note that the East and West data sets only take 2.7GB, so even with
the Alaska set, a single DVD has plenty of space for all of this (and
the ATA-100 data and an operating system...). Is anyone interested
in DVDs like that? I'm thinking that I'll donate these DVDs to Purdue.
The Computer Society there makes copies of various CDs as a fund raiser
and I'd try to get them to start making DVDs of these data sets if
people would pay enough to make it worthwhile.

I'll try to get some tools going soon. I'll also be configuring to
allow other people to write their own tools on my server and access
everything remotely through XML-RPC.

Enjoy!

--kyler

Stu Gotts writes:

HA! Won't Boeing/Jepp love that. The industry needs the competition,
but we might hear about Kyler's brakes failing while he drives around
a slippery mountain curve one day!

Another good reason for me to stay in Indiana...

--kyler

Thank You Sir. Imagine, up to date safety information for free. What a
concept. If you work out something for next year, I'll pony up my share.
Al Gerharter


"Kyler Laird" wrote in message
...
Stu Gotts writes:

HA! Won't Boeing/Jepp love that. The industry needs the competition,
but we might hear about Kyler's brakes failing while he drives around
a slippery mountain curve one day!

Another good reason for me to stay in Indiana...

--kyler

Nice of you.

Unless you are willing to provide it to us free for years to come, here is
my thought:

Get a group of people and have have share the cost of one subscription.
Burn copied CDs and mail them all. This could save individuals' cost as low
as 5 bucks instead of 700 bucks a year.

Toks

Now, if only we could get the vector data. That could make the files a
lot smaller and make it easier to write software to process the data.
You could do things like display only airports with long runways or only
private airports, or have it not display Victor airways or MOAs --
that'd make certain aspects of it easier to read.

Matthew F. G.

Kyler Laird wrote:
Not long ago, in rec.aviation.student,
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e....com&frame=off
I learned that the FAA is now selling scanned sectional chart DVDs.
http://www.naco.faa.gov/index.asp?xm...ctional_Raster