Open-Source IT for recreational flying
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We've all, I suspect, read your message, including
So you've had a lot of what others think. I detect a marked prickliness at views expressed which do not appear to reinforce your thoughts.
Most if not all the features you highlight are available in other products, including traffic avoidance on PocketFMS (I don't know about weather downloads - I understood that this was not available in the UK/Europe even to panel mounted units, but I will be corrected). True they are not free to users but those that are available have established a reputation for reliability and data integrity and have an established user base of faithful followers. Given the relative tightness of the market and a number of established products I cannot imaging this being viable. Having a product which will be dependant on regular data updates means having a robust business model with stable finances in place to ensure that users receive consistent and accurate updates. I don't see this being done by a team of what would essentially be volunteers.
So I thought I'd launch a discussion thread, to find out if others are thinking and/or
Most if not all the features you highlight are available in other products, including traffic avoidance on PocketFMS (I don't know about weather downloads - I understood that this was not available in the UK/Europe even to panel mounted units, but I will be corrected). True they are not free to users but those that are available have established a reputation for reliability and data integrity and have an established user base of faithful followers. Given the relative tightness of the market and a number of established products I cannot imaging this being viable. Having a product which will be dependant on regular data updates means having a robust business model with stable finances in place to ensure that users receive consistent and accurate updates. I don't see this being done by a team of what would essentially be volunteers.
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if others are thinking and/or working along the same lines, and see if perhaps a TEAM could be set up
As a software person you will have asked yourself the question many times - "Am I proposing to build an application to solve a problem?" - Or building an application that's looking for a problem to solve...
Whils't it looks like the project looks "relatively" straightforward from a technical perspective the data sourcing and updating, system updates, and all the other baggage that inevitably accompanies any software release looks like it might be extremely time consuming even for a small army of volunteer coders and helpers.
Much of the best open source stuff started life in a university or as a business application with people being paid or funded to do all the graft..
Prove to me there is a 'market' for this and I may be interested in doing a bit for "the team."
Thread Starter
@Justiciar: I do know my own tendency to "pricklyness" - what a neat word! - but had tried to limit it to people not reading what I actually wrote. I have learned to tolerate people disagreeing... };-) especially after asking myself...
As for "products" being available: I am fully aware of several, PocketFMS not the least - but they all remain products indeed. I revolt at the idea of having to pay for information that is _BY_LAW_ and _BY_NATURE_ freely available. And indeed what I have set up as yet is just a simple but usable graphical representation of data I collected, mostly from the AIP's, or from other sources who themselves consulted the AIP's.
Commercial sources carry my continued distrust - money gone is a certainty, the quality of supplied data remains to be seen. Hence my curiosity about liability/warranty. The lack of response is not really surprising me.
DAFIF I came to distrust, probably undeserved, through its advertising the wrong tower frequency for my (then) home airfield for several years. And it is discontinued, anyway.
The effort required to keep up the database would be big, but could be largely automated. Keeping users' data up to date would surely be their own responsability - the project can only endeavour to keep its database to the best possible standards, and offer a tool for users to synchronise with it.
@Windriver: thanks for your constructive reply. Yes I do know the matter of solution vs. problem. No I do believe I avoid this pitfall, I am trying to set up some free software and free data sources - "free" meaning both free of cost and free of copyright or other limitations - to do as many useful things as possible through the same hardware, to limit both cost and complexity and power consumption and panel occupation.
One "subproject" that would have to be done anyway is to create a European superset of aerodrome information, going beyond the AIP information (such as availability of fuel, restaurant, taxi, overnight hangarage). Several countries have comprehensive systems, but I find a European consolidation sadly missing. A multi-lingual consultation interface should be the least trouble... Again, such a database could be automatically updated from the various national contributors.
As for "products" being available: I am fully aware of several, PocketFMS not the least - but they all remain products indeed. I revolt at the idea of having to pay for information that is _BY_LAW_ and _BY_NATURE_ freely available. And indeed what I have set up as yet is just a simple but usable graphical representation of data I collected, mostly from the AIP's, or from other sources who themselves consulted the AIP's.
Commercial sources carry my continued distrust - money gone is a certainty, the quality of supplied data remains to be seen. Hence my curiosity about liability/warranty. The lack of response is not really surprising me.
DAFIF I came to distrust, probably undeserved, through its advertising the wrong tower frequency for my (then) home airfield for several years. And it is discontinued, anyway.
The effort required to keep up the database would be big, but could be largely automated. Keeping users' data up to date would surely be their own responsability - the project can only endeavour to keep its database to the best possible standards, and offer a tool for users to synchronise with it.
@Windriver: thanks for your constructive reply. Yes I do know the matter of solution vs. problem. No I do believe I avoid this pitfall, I am trying to set up some free software and free data sources - "free" meaning both free of cost and free of copyright or other limitations - to do as many useful things as possible through the same hardware, to limit both cost and complexity and power consumption and panel occupation.
One "subproject" that would have to be done anyway is to create a European superset of aerodrome information, going beyond the AIP information (such as availability of fuel, restaurant, taxi, overnight hangarage). Several countries have comprehensive systems, but I find a European consolidation sadly missing. A multi-lingual consultation interface should be the least trouble... Again, such a database could be automatically updated from the various national contributors.
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But IS any kind of guarantee offered by commercial airnav data suppliers like Jeppesen? Are there any stories known of people getting compensation for errors due to incorrect commercial data?
There is almost no insurance angle here because flying with hopeless charts is negligence, and insurance covers negligence.
There is no law (USA or UK) which stipulates a particular chart must be carried or used. It comes down to due diligence by the pilot.
I would guess Jepp have product liability insurance so if one of their approach plates is wrong and somebody gets killed, they are insured. I vaguely recall this has happened somewhere but it must be extremely rare.
But there is almost zero risk of anybody claiming over a mistake on a VFR chart or a "VFR" flight planning program because VFR=VMC and only a d1ck will fly into a hill in VMC
IMHO, IANAL, if you sell a "VFR" flight planning product then provided you make sure the mapping data supplied is obviously too poor to use alone (e.g. Navbox) there is no chance of ever getting successfully sued.
Thread Starter
Rather than flying into a hill - a very limited risk to anyone in this flat country - I was thinking of the real case of a VFR map published by our government map printers which gave incorrect vertical limits for some TMA. I never heard of any subsequent litigation, but it would certainly have been interesting.
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A prosecution by the CAA would be a criminal prosecution, but they would not be able to do it if it happened due to an error on a current chart of a type generally used for the purpose.
Normally, "getting sued" refers to a civil liability and I can't see how that would materialise. I suppose if you busted CAS and brought down an airliner, then the insurance co. which paid out to the victims could go after the chart publisher, but this is such a remote chance.
Normally, "getting sued" refers to a civil liability and I can't see how that would materialise. I suppose if you busted CAS and brought down an airliner, then the insurance co. which paid out to the victims could go after the chart publisher, but this is such a remote chance.
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Jan Olieslagers
I read what you put. I also read the history of PFMS, which started out with what I thought was exactly the same intention you have. PFMS was initially FOC, then on a donation, and then on subscription. It appears to do all the things you want. But then you know all that and did not need to ask in the first place.
Rod1
I read what you put. I also read the history of PFMS, which started out with what I thought was exactly the same intention you have. PFMS was initially FOC, then on a donation, and then on subscription. It appears to do all the things you want. But then you know all that and did not need to ask in the first place.
Rod1
Thread Starter
Sorry Rod, I really did not want to offend anyone. Still, even if the PFMS people started out doing the thing I am considering, they decided to go another way. That's up to them, they have all my respect and they certainly realised very nice stuff.
Perhaps I will follow their logic one day. Up till then, my efforts will just serve myself, apparently. Too bad.
Afterthought: even if PFMS started out willing to share their work freely, they choose to run in non-free O/S. So no, their project could never have been mine - again meaning no disrespect to their merit. Yes, you may call me religious. Happy flying.
Perhaps I will follow their logic one day. Up till then, my efforts will just serve myself, apparently. Too bad.
Afterthought: even if PFMS started out willing to share their work freely, they choose to run in non-free O/S. So no, their project could never have been mine - again meaning no disrespect to their merit. Yes, you may call me religious. Happy flying.
Last edited by Jan Olieslagers; 25th Aug 2010 at 19:08.
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For myself I am stupefied to see almost everybody relying blindly on commercial stuff.
But I'm not convinced that using some freeware web site or software for weather or NOTAMs would count as due diligence, so I go to the Met Office and AIS web sites.
It's all a matter of risk assessment, and each pilot makes his own judgement (cf the common repeated threads on SEP IMC and night flying). Mine is as above. Others will come to different conclusions.
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But I'm not convinced that using some freeware web site or software for weather or NOTAMs would count as due diligence, so I go to the Met Office and AIS web sites.
It's hard to know where the UK CAA stands on this kind of stuff (third party notam sites which attempt lat/long parsing and a graphical presentation, and the countless weather websites which nearly all present data from GFS).
They are still mostly denying the existence of the internet - except that preflight briefing is de facto now impossible without it. They certainly avoid any mention of GFS; all the PPL training stuff is TMK purely UK MO material (F214, F215, MSLP).
There is now a totally bizzare gulf between the material (and the environment) presented to a pilot during training, and the material (and the environment) which the pilot will be working once flying for real.
There are no CAA prosecutions I know of in this area (what constitutes due diligence for preflight) and I am damn sure they would be extremely reluctant to try one, because given the PPL training syllabus a defence lawyer with more than one braincell would wipe the floor with them.
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“They are still mostly denying the existence of the internet - except that preflight briefing is de facto now impossible without it.”
No, that is not the case. It is possible to phone up and get a weather brief (at a cost). It is possible to phone up and get Notams. It is possible to work a plog out without the Internet. You can still fly without ownership or access to a computer. I would not wish to do it, but I know people who do.
Rod1
No, that is not the case. It is possible to phone up and get a weather brief (at a cost). It is possible to phone up and get Notams. It is possible to work a plog out without the Internet. You can still fly without ownership or access to a computer. I would not wish to do it, but I know people who do.
Rod1
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@Jan all credit for trying to apply some technology to overcome some problems (although I also accept there's a risk of trying to develop technology based 'solutions' to problems that either don't exist or that have been resolved). My techie proposal is really easy to design and implement. Write a non-OS specific app thast flashes up on the screen a really important message..... "LOOK OUT OF THE WINDOW!".
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There is now a totally bizzare gulf between the material (and the environment) presented to a pilot during training, and the material (and the environment) which the pilot will be working once flying for real.
Or are some of these guys so risk adverse they can't or won't take change without another 10 years of paperwork?
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It is a vastly different model to anything we would have known 10 or 15 years ago so it is not easy to get one's mind around it (even for me, and I have been involved in free software since 1995). However, there is a tightly controlled process which keeps copyright infringement to a minimum (I do not think you can say you are completely free of copyright infringement, as that's very muddy waters, but that's a problem commercial business face just as much).
Incidentally, there is a degree of cooperation between OSM and local and national mapping agencies (the Ordnance Survey for one, strangely enough).
Caveat: considering my background I'm probably much less familiar with OSM than I should be.
