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Damn! Those floats sure do drag! by
Kyler Laird
We watched the movie "Trapped" recently. The good guy had a
floatplane (C182?). I thought that was cool. Then he had to
take a phone call while flying. He pulled the engine so that
the bad guy wouldn't know he was in a plane, but he had to
shove it into a 1,000-3,000 fpm dive! He did it twice...
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1 |
1,237 |
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Where would you most like to crash? by
Kyler Laird
I've thought about the possibilities of using GPS and air data along
with a well-stocked GIS to advise a pilot of the better places to
ditch. Using aircraft performance, wind, and terrain elevation
data, it would be fairly easy to determine the areas that could be
reached if power was lost. The...
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3 |
747 |
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CSI: "class four rating"?! by
Kyler Laird
In a CSI Miami episode that I recorded awhile ago, a pilot crashes
onto a beach. The NTSB inspector (who appears to be a complete
idiot compared to the profound star of the show), says "long flight
over the ocean; the pilot probably had a class four rating".
Does that have any basis in reality? ...
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1 |
397 |
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AVIATIONTOOLBOX: recent FAA sectional scans by
Kyler Laird
When I got my first DVD of sectional images from the FAA I was
thrilled by the quality of the scans. I did, however, notice
that the sectionals had wide-ranges of colors to denote similar
elevations. This was especially noticeable out west where the
sectionals meet.
Lately I've noticed that some...
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6 |
1,208 |
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AVIATIONTOOLBOX: plot GPS log by
Kyler Laird
I needed a break this morning so I whipped up a trivial little script
to create a sectional image from GPS data.
https://aviationtoolbox.org/Members/kyler/tools/trip_plot
It just barely works but it takes NMEA $GPRMC sentences and generates
a JPEG. I noticed that there are people who like to...
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7 |
920 |
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funny(?) GPS NOTAM by
Kyler Laird
Getting ready for some flights today I noticed this.
Kansas City Center (Olathe KS) : August NOTAM #19
issued by Gps Notam OA
GPS unreliable within a 350 nautical miles radius of
TRUTH or CONSEQUENCES VORTAC (TCS) at FL400, decreasing
in area with decrease with altitude to 300 nautical
miles...
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6 |
1,042 |
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general aviation search at Enterprise by
Kyler Laird
As I was considering renting a car today I noticed that Enterprise
has a section for general aviation.
http://www.enterprise.com/GA
"from your wings to our wheels"
Last time I rented an Enterprise car it was from a place just down
the road from N10. (They picked us up at the airport.) ...
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0 |
1,033 |
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flying for a charity by
Kyler Laird
I've tried to follow the "charitable airlift" discussions here over the
years and it usually makes my head hurt. I was just contacted with a
request to transport and I could really use some Usenet-level advice.
(Yeah, I've got AOPA legal services but I get better info here.)
There's a Rottweiler...
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3 |
979 |
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self-weighing luggage by
Kyler Laird
This struck me as something that could make loading the plane a
little easier.
http://ricardobeverlyhills.com/scale.html
Then I thought about it for another second. No, my fish scale is
a whole lot more versatile. It's not like I'm going to find a
self-weighing 5 gallon dogfood bag so I'll always...
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0 |
637 |
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3 |
2,552 |
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mysterious helipad location (Dallas, TX) by
Kyler Laird
Anyone want to take a stab at explaining where the Parkland Health
and Hospital System Heliport is? Here's the entry for Parkland's
heliport, TE43.
http://www.airnav.com/airport/TE43
The location...
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5 |
1,023 |
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I'm buying your sectionals for a year. by
Kyler Laird
Not long ago, in rec.aviation.student,
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&th=4b862b852fe3a472&seekm=e1449182.0310211155.6488628%40posting.google.com&frame=off
I learned that the FAA is now selling scanned sectional chart...
( 1 2 3 ... Last Page)
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34 |
3,721 |
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AVIATIONTOOLBOX: How do you like your maps stitched? by
Kyler Laird
Recently I've been working a lot on manipulating the FAA sectionals I
purchased.
http://aviationtoolbox.org/raw_data/FAA_sectionals/
I've been amazed by the hundreds of people who have downloaded this data.
There's apparently some interest in it so I'd like to solicit input on
some of the projects...
( 1 2 3)
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24 |
3,595 |
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AVIATIONTOOLBOX: ConUS sectionals in under 2GB by
Kyler Laird
I converted all of the sectional map chunks
http://aviationtoolbox.org/munge/mosaic
from 24-bit to 8-bit (palette) color. Putting them all into a
single zip file, they compressed to 1.9GB (2013432788 bytes).
http://aviationtoolbox.org/munge/chunked.zip
(To get a single uncompressed 8-bit color...
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0 |
1,596 |
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AVIATIONTOOLBOX: Christmas sectionals are here and rsync-able. by
Kyler Laird
Somehow the FAA forgot to send me the last batch of sectional DVDs
and by the time I finally called about it they didn't have any
remaining. I was told to wait for the next batch. It's here.
This batch doesn't become effective until December 25, 2003, but
because the previous batch has expired,...
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4 |
973 |
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AVIATIONTOOLBOX: alpha version of route mapping tool by
Kyler Laird
I took a little bit of a break after creating the tools to generate
normalized "chunks" from sectional images.
http://aviationtoolbox.org/munge/mosaic
Over the holidays I got back into it and tackled doing something
useful with those chunks. I already revealed my map_image tool which
generates an...
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0 |
1,252 |
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0 |
843 |
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AVIATIONTOOLBOX: new sectionals by
Kyler Laird
I just got the new sectionals (effective now) uploaded.
http://aviationtoolbox.org/raw_data/FAA_sectionals/current/
I suggest using rsync to get them.
http://aviationtoolbox.org/raw_data/FAA_sectionals/notes.txt
I'm masking/warping/chunking them now. I'll move the new chunks into
place (so that...
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1 |
856 |
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AVIATIONTOOLBOX: parsing FAA ATA-100 data by
Kyler Laird
I just uploaded the February 19, 2004 ATA-100 data.
http://aviationtoolbox.org/raw_data/FAA/ATA-100/20040219.zip
I've been asked several times (and twice this week) how I decode this data
for the delimited views
http://aviationtoolbox.org/old/ATA-100/
so I decided to take a pass at rewriting the...
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0 |
1,276 |
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FAA discovers the Internet by
Kyler Laird
"Aeronautical Information Services is in the process of testing a
web-based electronic data distribution system for the 56-day subscriber
files. This system will be replacing the current method of sending
subscribers a CD-ROM by FEDEX. The advantages of the new distribution
system are the data...
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2 |
534 |