Just a heads up, the excellent Flight Display is once again available, for those using Planeplotter. It now does route lookups on 5 sites:
Libhomeradar (http://www.libhomeradar.org/)
FRL (http://www.flightroutelookup.com/FlightRoute/)
FlightStats (http://www.flightstats.co.uk/)
Flytecom (http://www.flytecomm.com/)
FlightAware (http://flightaware.com/)
(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4130/5007402685_d2ef429c65_o_d.jpg)
Although even Dave Reid's FRL service can't resolve some of these alphanumeric flights :(
The way I use this is to run Planeplotter alongside Radarbox, and then once a week I export all the routes from FD7, and import those into the Radarbox routes table. It's a great way of gathering route data.
Download from http://sites.google.com/site/0flightdisplay/homepage
Make sure you read the readme.txt file before attempting installation.
Do the owners of those sites know they are getting flight information from them?
It is illegal to gather information from those sites to build a third party information database - that's why we are under a paid contract with flightstats.com to get flight number/callsign information from them.
Quote from: AirNav Development on September 20, 2010, 01:15:05 PMDo the owners of those sites know they are getting flight information from them?
I don't know. I guess Dave Reid should know since FD7 gets data from his Flight Route Lookup service, so presumably he has agreed to give free access to his service for FD7 users. Maybe he will do the same for Radarbox users?
So far today FD7 has gathered 130+ route details for me.
It would be strange to know DaveReid would be giving free access to FD7 users/SBS community and don't do the same with us. Let's wait for his position.
Quote from: tarbat on September 20, 2010, 01:22:33 PM
So far today FD7 has gathered 130+ route details for me.
Thanks for that Tarbat mate - really brightened up my day :(
Quote from: AirNav Development on September 20, 2010, 01:15:05 PM
Do the owners of those sites know they are getting flight information from them?
It is illegal to gather information from those sites to build a third party information database - that's why we are under a paid contract with flightstats.com to get flight number/callsign information from them.
Surely it's the fact that you are a commercial undertaking charging for the use of the database as part of the purchase price of your product that requires you to pay for the data from flightstats.com? FD7 is a free tool for users who can normally look up the information free for their own use to automate the process. As long as they do not then sell on that information they are breaking no law.
Quote from: viking9 on September 20, 2010, 01:59:56 PM
FD7 is a free tool for users who can normally look up the information free for their own use to automate the process. As long as they do not then sell on that information they are breaking no law.
Does that mean that a linkup between Airnav and FD - similar to that between FD and PP (& SBS apparently) - could provide us quite legally with the same free data that Tarbat is accessing via PP?
Quote from: bratters on September 20, 2010, 02:25:27 PMDoes that mean that a linkup between Airnav and FD - similar to that between FD and PP (& SBS apparently) - could provide us quite legally with the same free data that Tarbat is accessing via PP?
I would think so. FD7 is free to use with SBS-1. Maybe Airnav could do a deal with Allan Bird to further develop FD7 to work with Radarbox. After all, aren't all SBS-1 addons meant to work with Radarbox ;-)
Well, it sounds like it could be a step in the right direction.
We would still face the question of getting the data into our individual databases -which could be a challenge for the somewhat PC-daft amongst us.
We do need to do something about routes and I also think we must try to avoid politics, fingerpointing and back-biting which is totally counter-productive.
Turns out that FD7 can be used directly with Radarbox, no need to use Planeplotter.
1. Create an almost empty SBS-1 Basestation database, and put it in any folder you like. I've got mine in the Radarbox folder. It contains ONE aircraft record, for Aircraft ID = zero. This is needed since all port 30003 output from Radarbox assigns an Aircraft ID of zero.
2. Configure FD7 to use SBS-1.
(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4104/5008796438_1ffa04dd4a_t_d.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarbat/5008796438/sizes/o/in/photostream/)
3. Once a week export the routes from FD7 and import them into your routes table.
Simples........
EDIT: Looks like Autopopulate doesn't work using this method :(
This is an interesting discussion and we consider all the points.
"FD7 is a free tool for users who can normally look up the information free for their own use to automate the process. As long as they do not then sell on that information they are breaking no law."
This is false. The use of automatic programmed robots to gather data from other sites is totally illegal.
Let's first wait for DaveReid's answer to:
"It would be strange to know DaveReid would be giving free access to FD7 users/SBS community and don't do the same with us."
After that we will continue our discussion.
Quote from: AirNav Development on September 20, 2010, 03:31:42 PMLet's first wait for DaveReid's answer to:
"It would be strange to know DaveReid would be giving free access to FD7 users/SBS community and don't do the same with us."
After that we will continue our discussion.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
- <Flight>
<FlightNumber>SHT9J</FlightNumber>
<Callsign>Shuttle 9J</Callsign>
- <Leg>
- <Origin>
<ICAOCode>EGPH</ICAOCode>
<IATACode>EDI</IATACode>
<AirportName>EDINBURGH/TURNHOUSE</AirportName>
<Country>UNITED KINGDOM</Country>
</Origin>
- <Destination>
<ICAOCode>EGLL</ICAOCode>
<IATACode>LHR</IATACode>
<AirportName>LONDON/HEATHROW</AirportName>
<Country>UNITED KINGDOM</Country>
</Destination>
<GCDistanceNM>288</GCDistanceNM>
</Leg>
</Flight>
Source: www.flightroutelookup.com
This information is hereby placed in the public domain and may be freely used without attribution by any individual or ORGANISATION.AirNav, if you'd like to tell me what part of that statement you don't understand, I'd be delighted to explain it to you.
Having said that, don't you dare try to pass the buck to me, or indeed to any other third party, for the abysmal quality of your flight routes database and the failure of your "fix".
We are your customers, you aren't ours.
Dave we are just asking the following:
1- Are you providing free flight data to the FD7 application? Y/N?
2- Are you able to provide such flight data to our community too?
3- If yes how can we access your flight data script (the same way FD7 does)?
Simple questions, simple answers expected.
Quote from: AirNav Development on September 20, 2010, 04:32:19 PMSimple questions, simple answers expected.
Perhaps I could get an answer first to the question I asked you over a month ago, and on other occasions since ?
You know the one I mean, of course.
Dave please don't try to be sarcastic one more time.
Quite simple: are you providing route information to the Flight Display application (SBS community) for free? Are you able to do the same with the RadarBox community?
Quote from: DaveReid on August 18, 2010, 09:28:50 AMI would assume (that word again!) that in the same way that new routes can be identified, so the routing for flights already in the database can be validated each time the same callsign is subsequently picked up on approach or climbout.
Perhaps, now that the system is fully operational, AirNav could explain a bit more about how it works to reassure our readers.
How exactly does asking a question like that, and expecting an answer, equate to sarcasm ?
Does that mean your questions are equally "sarcastic" too, then ?
Please answer the questions below as our community would like to know about them.
1- Are you providing free flight data to the FD7 application? Y/N?
2- Are you able to provide such flight data to our community too?
3- If yes how can we access your flight data script (the same way FD7 does)?
Quote from: bratters on September 20, 2010, 02:59:38 PM
We do need to do something about routes and I also think we must try to avoid politics, fingerpointing and back-biting which is totally counter-productive.
Hear hear............................ I dont comment on it normally, but there does seem to be a fair bit of it going on re: this subject............
regards
Bob
We understand it and we want to avoid at maximum these kind of discussions on our forum. Anyway there are situation that need to be clarified. That's why we keep waiting for DaveReid answers.
Quote from: AirNav Development on September 20, 2010, 03:31:42 PMThe use of automatic programmed robots to gather data from other sites is totally illegal.
Well, in the case of Dave Reid's FRL service, he publishes the interface that anyone can use to get route information from his database. It's documented at http://www.flightroutelookup.com/FlightRoute/FlightLookup.wso?op=FlightLookup
All you need is an allocated UserName from Dave. I note that FD7 uses "tester" as it's UserName.
Ok but we need Dave's permission to do so. Dave do you give AirNav Systems permission to retrieve flight route data from your server and populate our central database for the benefit of the RadarBox community?
Quote from: AirNav Development on September 20, 2010, 05:54:44 PM
Ok but we need Dave's permission to do so. Dave do you give AirNav Systems permission to retrieve flight route data from your server and populate our central database for the benefit of the RadarBox community?
Dave is thinking boys thinking.
Has anyone worked out how to get auto-populate working in FD7 when using it with Radarbox. I only ever get the first aircraft auto-populating, and then nothing.
I wonder if it's anything to do with port 30003 always outputting records with Field 6: FlightID always set to zero. Airnav, any chance of changing port 30003 output to provide an incremented Field 6 so that SBS-1 addons work properly?
Thought I would see how reliable FD7 was in retrieving routes. Tested over a period of one hour, I clicked on every aircraft to trigger a route lookup in FD7.
Of the 41 aircraft that had a Flight ID, only 23 were successful in retrieving route details. That's a success rate of only 56%. I think this illustrates the problem we have with route lookups. Even using FIVE different route lookup sites, even FD7 can only achieve a 56% success rate.
Flight ID From To
AAAAAAAA
ACA850 CYYC EGLL
ACA898 CYEG EGLL
AF3419
BEE6CM
BMA673 EGPD EGLL
BMR683V
CCPW0O
COA123 EKCH KEWR
CWL91
DAL233 EHAM KSEA
DAL259 EHAM KMSP
DAL261 EHAM KPDX
DAL8 KIAH OMDB
DLH456 EDDF KLAX
EZE32F EGNT EGPD
EZY153 EGGW EGPE
EZY94EG
GFRAL
GFRAP
GFRAR
ICE502 BIKF EHAM
ICE520 BIKF EDDF
KLM669 EHAM KDFW
LNX47CP
LOG57JA
LOG83HB
LOG91DT
OYTWO
QTR52 KIAD OTBD
RAE556 LFPG EGPD
RYR84CL EGPK ESGP
SAS2548 EGCC ESSA
SAS540 EGCC EKCH
SHT17Q EGPH EGKK
SHT18Y
SHT19U
SHT9Z EGPH EGLL
TCX69K EGPF CYYC
TSO594
VIR20X KSFO EGLL
Tarbat,
I do notice that some of the routes showing relate to alphanumeric flight numbers. Now there's an advance on the current situation straight away !
Did some further testing today, and out of 223 flights, FD7 returned different route details compared with Radarbox in 23 instances:
FlightId FD7_Route ANRB_Route
BCY174Z EGPN-EGLC
BDI19C EGPH-EGQK
BEE3LT EGPE-EGBB
BEE51PM EGBB-EGPD
BER7430 EDDL-KLAX EDDM-MUVR
BMR134V EGPD-EGSH
DLH451 KLAX-EDDF KLAX-EDDM
EZE1041 EGPD-EDDH
EZE36X EGGD-EGPD
EZE54G EGPD-EGPO
EZE65L EGPD-EGNV
FPG788 LIRN-LSGG
NJE6BR LFRG-EHAM
RYN557 KRFD-EDDP KSVN-CYQX
RYR1LA EGPH-GCTS
RYR7HJ EIDW-LEMD
SHT17D EGPH-EGKK
SHT9J EGPH-EGLL
UAL901 EDDF-KSAN EDDF-KSFO
UAL907 EDDM-KSFO EDDM-KORD-KSFO
UAL931 EGLL-KLAX KSFO-KLAX
UAL939 EGLL-KSAN EGLL-KDEN-KSAN
UAL941 EDDF-KDEN EDDF-KORD
Which is correct I have no way of knowing!!
BER 7430 and DLH 451 are the FD7 Route correct
If anyone else is using FD7 with Radarbox, I've now discovered a way of auto-populating the routes for EVERY aircraft. Use the "Start Tour" button in Radarbox. This cycles round each aircraft in the list, and sends a SEL message on port 30003, triggering FD7 to do a route lookup.
Then at the end of the day, export the routes from FD7, using this query:
SELECT DISTINCT
Routes.FlightID AS FN,
Routes.DepICAO AS NO,
Routes.ArrICAO AS ND,
"" AS NV,
substr(Routes.Posted,1,4)||substr(Routes.Posted,6,2)||substr(Routes.Posted,9,2)||"000000" AS CH
FROM
Routes
WHERE
(Routes.DepICAO IS NOT NULL) AND
(Routes.ArrICAO IS NOT NULL) AND
(Routes.DepICAO <> "") AND
(Routes.ArrICAO <> "")
ANd import into the Radarbox routes table.
Chris
Are you using FD7 with 32bit windows or 64bit, still got problems here.
Andy
Quote from: abrad41 on September 29, 2010, 10:33:56 AMAre you using FD7 with 32bit windows or 64bit, still got problems here.
32-bit on Vista. Note there are separate 32-bit and 64-bit versions. What problems are you having?
Chris
When I install and then direct it to the folder where the sqb file is I get a error message - think it is saying that the FD7 data file is missing, I think this should be put in the same folder as the sqb file.
I did download the 64bit version as I am running windows 7 64bit.
Andy
Have you followed the install instructions and created a "UserData" folder in the same folder that your basestation.sqb file is located? I've put a basestation.sqb database and UserData folder in the radarbox DATA folder.
Thanks Chris
You are a star