I'm buying your sectionals for a year.

"Matthew F. G." writes:

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.

Roll your own.
http://aviationtoolbox.org/old/ATA-100/

--kyler

That's really cool Kyler!

Did you ask about reproduction and distribution rights?

Just wondering what the other companies like Maptech think about this. Last
I talked to them they were scanning the sectionals but the quality was not
as good as these, course these are larger.

mark

"Kyler Laird" wrote in message
...
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

"markm" writes:

That's really cool Kyler!

I'm happy to hear you find it useful. There's a lot more data to come.

Did you ask about reproduction and distribution rights?

http://aviationtoolbox.org/raw_data/...67%20South.htm

Acknowledgement of the Federal Aviation Administration would be
appreciated in products derived from these data. When product
developers or other customers acknowledge the Federal Aviation
Administration as the source of the data, the FAA seal or
initials cannot be used to imply that a product is endorsed,
approved, or authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Does everyone agree that I've acknowledged the FAA as the source of the
data without implying that they've endorsed, approved or authorized my
distribution?

I assume that since this data collection is taxpayer-funded, the FAA
would like to see it utilized by taxpayers. Their cost of distribution
is about $600/year/customer. I can understand that; they have a lot of
overhead in order to make this all official and charge people for it.
I'm providing quite a different, _very_ unofficial product with
dramatically lower overhead - in large part because I'm willing to eat
the cost of it instead of maintaining an accounting infrastructure.

My hope is that there are people at the FAA/NACO who are thrilled to see
this data widely and freely distributed so that more people can take
advantage of it. I don't know why anyone would object.

Just wondering what the other companies like Maptech think about this. Last
I talked to them they were scanning the sectionals but the quality was not
as good as these,

They're welcome to use these images. While I'm more interested in Free
projects and individuals using this data, I don't have any qualms with
others downloading the images from me if they do something beneficial
with them.

course these are larger.

There are lots of options for making them smaller. We're all free to
experiment now.

BTW, I was quite surprised at how many people wanted this data. I've had
about 415 machines check out the data, with over half getting at least one
TIFF, and a third getting a zipped collection. I've been pushing well
over 5Mbps (my limit) continuously.

Today the demand really dropped off. There's a dialup user getting a few
of the sectionals and someone in Houston just started downloading the
entire collection. That's a lot different from having several high-speed
users download everything.

I just looked into upgrading my bandwidth plan, but I don't think it'll be
necessary. I'm only pushing 3Mbps right now. I think everyone is almost
satisfied. I'll try to keep the update process efficient so that we don't
have to go through this big push again.

--kyler

This is AWESOME!
I love this! Thank you Kyler!

I have a large format printer at my office, Color too! this will be great
for Cross Countries!
thanks you again.

David



"Kyler Laird" wrote in message
...
Not long ago, in rec.aviation.student,

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...2fe3a472&seekm
=e1449182.0310211155.6488628%40posting.google.com& frame=off
I learned that the FAA is now selling scanned sectional chart DVDs.

http://www.naco.faa.gov/index.asp?xm...tal/Sectional_
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

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/



Hi Kyler, can you tell me the difference in the file in your directories?

Parent Directory -
20031030-East.zip 13-Nov-2003 02:39 1.5G
20031030-West.zip 13-Nov-2003 02:41 1.2G
20031030/ 13-Nov-2003 02:05 -
current-East.zip 13-Nov-2003 02:39 1.5G
current-West.zip 13-Nov-2003 02:41 1.2G
current/ 13-Nov-2003 02:05 -
notes.txt 14-Nov-2003 17:39 655
sectional_regions.png 13-Nov-2003 16:36 858K

should we be downloading the current east and west or the 20031030-east and
west files??

Just curious!
Thanks again for doing this!

David

"David Whitford" writes:

http://aviationtoolbox.org/raw_data/FAA_sectionals/

Hi Kyler, can you tell me the difference in the file in your directories?

Parent Directory -
20031030-East.zip 13-Nov-2003 02:39 1.5G
20031030-West.zip 13-Nov-2003 02:41 1.2G
20031030/ 13-Nov-2003 02:05 -
current-East.zip 13-Nov-2003 02:39 1.5G
current-West.zip 13-Nov-2003 02:41 1.2G
current/ 13-Nov-2003 02:05 -
notes.txt 14-Nov-2003 17:39 655
sectional_regions.png 13-Nov-2003 16:36 858K

There is no difference between 20031030-* and current-*
right now. The "current" stuff is just a symlink to the
current issue.

I was thinking that each issue would be completely new,
but then I realized that since new issues come out every
28 days there are probably going to be a lot of files that
are the same from one issue to another. I'm hoping to
more efficiently handle this so that I can keep more old
issues around. (That might be silly, but I hate to get
rid of data.)

Things'll change as I figure out all of this. I hope to
get it together after the next issue arrives.

--kyler

Kyler,

It is incredibly awesome that you are doing this. I know I APPRECIATE it !

Thanks again!

David

"Kyler Laird" wrote in message
...
There is no difference between 20031030-* and current-*
right now. The "current" stuff is just a symlink to the
current issue.

I was thinking that each issue would be completely new,
but then I realized that since new issues come out every
28 days there are probably going to be a lot of files that
are the same from one issue to another. I'm hoping to
more efficiently handle this so that I can keep more old
issues around. (That might be silly, but I hate to get
rid of data.)

Just curious why you 'need' to save old data. Recycle those ones and zeros
for some other use instead of outdated charts.

"Sven" writes:

I was thinking that each issue would be completely new,
but then I realized that since new issues come out every
28 days there are probably going to be a lot of files that
are the same from one issue to another. I'm hoping to
more efficiently handle this so that I can keep more old
issues around. (That might be silly, but I hate to get
rid of data.)

Just curious why you 'need' to save old data.

I don't "need" to save it. I thought there might be some use for it
though.

I'd like to try, for example, doing diffs of sectionals. That way
we can quickly spot changes. I'd use something like that for my area.
It's easy to become complacent about "home".

I've seen others ask for historic sectionals. I wouldn't mind storing
one of each per year just for research purposes.

--kyler

Kyler:

Thank you!