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