USA charted airport database available

Note that a recent (~April 2006) database of all the charted airports in
the USA, including Alaska and Hawaii, is available from John Leibacher's
Turnpoint exchange (http://soaring.aerobatics.ws/TP/FAA). This database
is derived from an FAA database sold on CDs that Paul Remde and I
discovered together, and then Paul found someone in the FAA to give John
free online access to it. Thank you, Paul!

John wrote the script that parses the file into the SeeYou format, and I
assume plans to offer other formats when he's not so busy. Since the
SeeYou format is a plain text file, it wouldn't take too much work with
spreadsheet or similar to rearrange it into other formats.

Besides the obvious lat/long/elevation/radio frequency kind of thing,
the comment section includes runway width for the widest runway, and the
fuel availability (I'm a motorglider pilot, so I talked John into that
one!). Duplicate names (100's of them!) are modified by appending the
State abbreviation (e.g., "Richland WA" for the Richland airport in
Washington state), and then a number if there are duplicates within a state.

I used it for a couple months on my trip around the country, and what a
huge convenience it was to have this information at my finger tips
without tediously inputting for each of the 9 places I flew. I'm now
using it at home just as happily. Thank you, John!

You still have to keep your own database of runways and landable areas
that aren't on the charts. With SeeYou, it's easy to merge these into
the FAA file.

--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA

www.motorglider.org - Download "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane
Operation"