Airnav.com FTP data?

BillG

BillG

Pre-takeoff checklist
Joined
Apr 8, 2005
Messages
301
Location
Massachusetts
Display Name
Display name:
Bill Greenberg
Years ago you could FTP airnav.com's databases, which I then imported into Lotus Notes and wrote a distance/time calculator for. My data needs updating but I can't seem to access it from Airnav any moe. Anyone have any ideas? Or another place to get a database of coordinates for all airports?
 
They don't appear to have an ftp server running at either ftp.airnav.com or airnav.com - have you tried the contact us link at the bottom of their pages?
 
Well, I lied - I was able to ftp to airnav.com - but anon access only opened up an "incoming" directory...
 
Chuck, been there, done that - same results. Hmm - ask them if they still give access to the data. What a novel idea!! :)
 
Yeah I'm full of ideas. Sometimes they work too.

Not TODAY it seems...but sometimes... ;)
 
Well, your response is better than what I expected. I figured I'd first get some "Use the AOPA website" etc etc. Which won't work for me - I need a database with lat/long for every airport so I can import the data to my own application here...
 
Airnav is very difficult to do business with. I was trying to work a deal where I needed that data (kept current) and I basically told them I would pay any reasonable cost to get it.

They took forever to answer simple questions, and I never did get a price quote. The worst part was they acted interested when they did write, but offered numerous excuses as to why they took so long to answer...and then instead of just saying how much it would cost...they would ask me lame questions...

If they would have just said, "screw off" I would have been happier than, "Yes! We are very interested in providing that information...and then never doing it."

In the end I abandonded the project...frustrated and unable to find any source.

While AirNav is my hero for airport / fix / fuel information, they left a very bad taste in my mouth as a provider of information.
 
Well, that's not very encouraging. Neither is their lack of response to me. Oh well - looks like the database I have now will just have to wither away as it gets older and older. Bummer.
 
I think the FAA has that information somewhere on their site, but won't swear to it. May be worth looking around for it.
 
I took a quick look but didn't find an airport database I could download. :(
 
Yeah, baby - that's what I'm talking about!! :) Thanks, Chuck!
 
You mean you want the FAA ATA-100 Data? It is requested that you download these files after 10:00 PM and before 7:00 AM Pacific Time. Please do not transfer files between 7:00AM to 10:00PM. Thank You. Please don't ruin it for the rest of us.

FYI, the feds send this data on CD by subscripton for some 100s of $$. These guys make it available for free, which of course it should be. It's public data.

There's a data dictionary on each set.

Now you know where AirNav and others get that information. (From the FAA I mean, not these guys.)
 
Thanks, Mike - I'll check that out too, but the data directly from the FAA in Chuck's post was exactly what I was looking for. Actually it was way more than I was looking for but now I have all kinds of new ideas. :)
 
Hey, Chuck, I was thinking that we could set up a bittorrent of this ATA-100 data.

If we set up multiple seeds and trackers we would share the bandwidth load, which shouldn't be that much anyway. It ain't like these are huge video files. They're small these days and the market for the data is even smaller.

The newer versions of BitTorrrent have distributed trackers so the host site only gets things started for those clients. Because we can't expect to have a lot of clients active, we should make the host sites client nodes. The more nodes the more we share the load with the clients.

I'll donate my site as a mirror.

Do you want me to contact this site to see if they're interested in joining up? We can do it even without them by simply setting up an auto FTP script to run at each update, to get the data from them ONCE off hours. I think I had found another site which I'll have to dig out of my bookmarks, but that may have been airnav.

We could also contact other aviation sites to see if we can get more participants.
 
mikea said:
Hey, Chuck, I was thinking that we could set up a bittorrent of this ATA-100 data.
Click to expand...
An intriguing idea, and these files aren't all that big.

I haven't done anything with bittorrent before - playing catchup now reading about it. We'd have to manually update our feeds, I presume, with fresh downloads from the FAA?
 
Greebo said:
An intriguing idea, and these files aren't all that big.

I haven't done anything with bittorrent before - playing catchup now reading about it. We'd have to manually update our feeds, I presume, with fresh downloads from the FAA?
Click to expand...

I'd have to read up on the server side issues of bittorrent, too. I've used it a bunch as client to get and share stuff like linux distros and podcasts. The home site is the author Bram Cohen's: http://www.bittorrent.com/ Interesting guy. He has a mild form of Asberger's Syndrome, a form of autism, which lets him concentrate on tough problems.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/bittorrent.html?pg=1&topic=bittorrent&topic_set=
http://www.wrongplanet.net/modules.php?name=Articles&pa=showpage&pid=98
Reading what he says about Asberger's, I think I may have it, too. |-{)

AFAIK, hosting the tracker of a popular and large file can be a bandwidth issue, not because of the file but because everybody is checking and updating the tracker so they can find each other. The new trackerless clients take the heat off of the tracker server. As I said, most of those issues are not going to be ours because we'll be hosting neither large or popular files.

In order to get them from the FAA we'd have to subscribe to get the data on CD, which I think the last time I looked is $169 per.

What bittorrent will do is take the FTP heat off of pilotage.com, which they are asking client to cooperate with. With FTP every download comes from them to the client in real time, so they have to provide file size x number of clients in bandwidth. With BitTorrent each client will offer to upload whatever parts of the file they have so the server only has to help them get talking to each other.

I was planning on leeching (once, off hours) from pilotage.com as long as THEY are springing for the subscription. We would contact them for permission and see if they're interested in participating in the torrent.
 
We don't need to subscribe to the FAA to get the data - you can download all the stuff from them for free. I just did. They provide a series of text files with file format definitions for everything we'd ever want and more, it looks like. Either means - cd or ftp - means manual file updates on the server so why bother with CDs.

And its only a 16 MB zip file. The FAA doesn't want you downloading from them during the day (tough, my taxes helped pay for that ftp server, and they didnt put a time block on their ftp server, so oh well for them) - and its not like a 16 mb file is a huge strain on modern servers.

It seems like bittorrent might be overkill for this. I'd be happy to simply Mirror the FAA's data and leave it at that.
 
BillG said:
Yeah, baby - that's what I'm talking about!! :) Thanks, Chuck!
Click to expand...
Bill,

If that doesn't work let me know. I can get you current info in just about any format you want. E-mail me if you need something you can't get otherwise.
 
Greebo said:
We don't need to subscribe to the FAA to get the data - you can download all the stuff from them for free. I just did. They provide a series of text files with file format definitions for everything we'd ever want and more, it looks like. Either means - cd or ftp - means manual file updates on the server so why bother with CDs.

And its only a 16 MB zip file. The FAA doesn't want you downloading from them during the day (tough, my taxes helped pay for that ftp server, and they didnt put a time block on their ftp server, so oh well for them) - and its not like a 16 mb file is a huge strain on modern servers.

It seems like bittorrent might be overkill for this. I'd be happy to simply Mirror the FAA's data and leave it at that.
Click to expand...

Oh, OK. That's what I get for being an old fa*. I'm talking about how it was the last time I looked several years ago which was before we all had T1 speeds to toss around.

That pilotage site was one of the few that offered the data, and that was witht he restrictions.

Good deal. I'll mirror it, too.

We should just watch the bandwidth bill to see if there's any impact.

BTW, the feds will make the data non-available again if enough taxpayers decide to ignore the rules.
 
Wait, I don't get it - it looked like the data directly from the FAA is very good (and free). I looked at that ATA 100 data and I don't even understand the format. Why is that more interesting than the free, well formatted data directly from the FAA?
 
That ata 100 data is also free and formatted from the FAA in text files. There is a folder inside the zip called text formats that defines the format of the various text files.

It's a raw data format organized by distinct categories. Lots of data...way lots...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top