AirNav Systems Forum

AirNav Radar => AirNav Radar Discussion => Topic started by: bratters on May 04, 2011, 08:52:48 AM

Title: Routes situation
Post by: bratters on May 04, 2011, 08:52:48 AM
The routes situation seems to be deteriorating again.

This may well be due to the introduction of summer schedules but surprisingly(?) there are some hefty gaps appearing in national carriers like KLM, EIN & BAW. The lo-cost airlines are as patchy as ever and Whizz and flybe are particularly poor.

I use Flight Display Lite (for which many thanks!!) with the Airnav Route Autopopulate facility off but can anyone tell me how reliable the latter is nowadays and is it worth using?



Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: AirNav Support on May 04, 2011, 09:05:39 AM
The refresh hasn't happened yet for our Flight Database to pull in the new summer schedules. We are still seeing a lot of gaps so holding off for a bit.

If you are using Flight Display Lite only and seeing gaps it does really highlight how difficult it is to get accurate and reliable route data even when you are using many sources.

Having said that as the new schedules have come in recently, the data should be more reliable soon as people identify flights.
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: bratters on May 04, 2011, 10:10:45 AM
Thanks for a prompt reply Airnav.
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: tarbat on May 04, 2011, 10:13:53 AM
I stopped using FDLite a while ago in favour of using the routes download available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PP-logs-and-routes/

If you've got specific examples of missing routes I'm happy to check if these are included in that download.  Today's download includes 859 KLM routes, 572 EIN routes, and 1155 BAW routes.

If you decide to use the database from Yahoo groups, this query generates what you need to import into Radabox:

SELECT DISTINCT 
  FlightRoute.flight AS FN,
  substr(FlightRoute.route,1,4) AS NO,
  substr(FlightRoute.route,length(FlightRoute.route)-3,4) AS ND,
  "" AS NV,
  substr(date('now'),1,4) || substr(date('now'),6,2) || substr(date('now'),9,2) || "090000" AS CH
FROM
FlightRoute
ORDER BY
  FN
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: Evanelpus on May 04, 2011, 10:20:34 AM
Someone told me that the routes situation is a well known problem and that Air Nav only updates this part of the database every six months.

Is this true?  If it is, how does the database ever catch up with routes etc between summer and winter schedules?
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: Runway 31 on May 04, 2011, 10:23:29 AM
Tarbat,

For someone who is very interested in the queries you post but isnt aware of how these queries work, where do you put the query and what software do you need to get it to work.

Thanks.

Alan
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: AirNav Support on May 04, 2011, 10:51:28 AM
Evanelpus,

What we do after the summer or winter schedules begin is to clean our routes database so its empty. Then any route look ups from our users lookup at FlightStats and few other sources we have for the latest route. This is written to our database and any further look ups just use the database data if it has data otherwise it looks up using FlightStats and other sources.
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: tarbat on May 04, 2011, 12:32:06 PM
Quote from: Runway 31 on May 04, 2011, 10:23:29 AMFor someone who is very interested in the queries you post but isnt aware of how these queries work, where do you put the query and what software do you need to get it to work.

I use SQLite Maestro.
1. Open the Yahoo groups routes database.
2. Run the query, and export to XML.
3. Open the navdata.db3 database.
4. Empty the routes table.
4. Import the XML file to the routes table.

I do this on a regular basis, and currently have 60,000+ routes.  Of course I can't vouch for the accuracy of the Yahoo groups database, but I've never spotted any obvious errors.
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: Runway 31 on May 04, 2011, 12:51:28 PM
Thanks Chris,

I will give it a go.

Alan
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: Chris11 on May 04, 2011, 02:30:00 PM
There is a Yahoo group with a routes database?
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: tarbat on May 04, 2011, 02:44:47 PM
Quote from: Chris11 on May 04, 2011, 02:30:00 PM
There is a Yahoo group with a routes database?

Yes - goto the files section at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PP-logs-and-routes/
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: Evanelpus on May 04, 2011, 03:16:07 PM
Quote from: AirNav Support on May 04, 2011, 10:51:28 AM
Evanelpus,

What we do after the summer or winter schedules begin is to clean our routes database so its empty. Then any route look ups from our users lookup at FlightStats and few other sources we have for the latest route. This is written to our database and any further look ups just use the database data if it has data otherwise it looks up using FlightStats and other sources.

I think I understand this!

The summer schedules have been in place for a while now and I was wondering when Air Nav hope to have a definative route database in place for the summer schedules?
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: AirNav Support on May 04, 2011, 03:22:05 PM
We haven't done the refresh yet as mentioned in our 1st post on this thread, we hope to do in a few weeks which should pick up fresh data.

As other people have noticed there are some gaps in summer schedule data at many sites at the moment. The task of getting full schedules with the added complexity of alpha numeric routes is not easy.
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: Pinza on May 05, 2011, 09:21:29 PM
Hi Tarbart,

Just spent a couple of hours playing with your advice posted on May 4th.

Dowloaded and installed SQLite Maestro.

Joined relevant Yahoo group and downloaded latest Routes database.

Fired up SQLite Maestro (30 day trial) and managed to open Yahoo group database.

Initially only showed 1000 routes, but then found option to show all records - 'fetched' an impressive 60214 routes.

Obviously along the right lines, so far, but when I try to run your query I run into problems:

I get the error message attached (hopefully) below?

Cut & pasted your query - so shouldn;t be any typos...

Appreciate this is a forum for AirNAv rather than SQLMaestro, but any help much appreciated!

Chris
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: Chris11 on May 06, 2011, 01:53:06 PM
Wait for this weekends update to the pp-logs update - I have heard there will be a large update
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: tarbat on May 06, 2011, 03:38:28 PM
Quote from: Pinza on May 05, 2011, 09:21:29 PMI get the error message attached (hopefully) below?

Cut & pasted your query - so shouldn;t be any typos...

Cut & Paste from this forum seems to remove end-of-line breaks.  Try this:

SELECT DISTINCT
       FlightRoute.flight AS FN,
       substr(FlightRoute.route,1,4) AS NO,
       substr(FlightRoute.route,length(FlightRoute.route)-3,4) AS ND,
       "" AS NV,
       substr(date('now'),1,4) || substr(date('now'),6,2) || substr(date('now'),9,2) || "090000" AS CH
FROM FlightRoute
ORDER BY
      FN
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: Pinza on May 06, 2011, 06:43:43 PM
Many thanks for that Tarbat - that re-posted query worked fine.

I now have 60214 routes in a format ready to export to XML and re-import into my AirNav routes database.

Pushing the limits of my computer skills, but will give it a go later!

Need to eat first and then make sure everything possible is backed up before I proceed...

Will report back how it goes.

Thanks again
Chris



Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: Pinza on May 06, 2011, 07:14:20 PM
Quote from: tarbat on May 04, 2011, 12:32:06 PM
Quote from: Runway 31 on May 04, 2011, 10:23:29 AMFor someone who is very interested in the queries you post but isnt aware of how these queries work, where do you put the query and what software do you need to get it to work.

I use SQLite Maestro.
1. Open the Yahoo groups routes database.
2. Run the query, and export to XML.
3. Open the navdata.db3 database.
4. Empty the routes table.
4. Import the XML file to the routes table.

I do this on a regular basis, and currently have 60,000+ routes.  Of course I can't vouch for the accuracy of the Yahoo groups database, but I've never spotted any obvious errors.

Okay, have followed steps 1 & 2 successfully. I now have a file called routes.xml in a location that I know where to retrieve it from.

Steps 3, 4 and 5 are confusing me:

When you say " Open the navdata.db3 database." do you mean in SQlite Maestro or in ANRB itself.

If the latter, do I need to be in Database Explorer? - I see no option for 'emptying' the routes. And only import option seems to be for SQB files.

Sorry to be pain, but would like to get this to work - feel I'm very close!

Chris

Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: tarbat on May 06, 2011, 07:29:21 PM
Quote from: Pinza on May 06, 2011, 07:14:20 PMWhen you say " Open the navdata.db3 database." do you mean in SQlite Maestro or in ANRB itself.

In SQLite Maestro.  Take a backup before you mess around with the database though.
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: Pinza on May 06, 2011, 07:50:59 PM
Quote from: tarbat on May 06, 2011, 07:29:21 PM
Quote from: Pinza on May 06, 2011, 07:14:20 PMWhen you say " Open the navdata.db3 database." do you mean in SQlite Maestro or in ANRB itself.

In SQLite Maestro.  Take a backup before you mess around with the database though.

Almost there!

Now have navdata.db3 database open in SQLite Maestro and navigated to the routes table.

How do I empty the data from this table (showing 396358 dodgy routes) before I import my XML file of 60214+ updated routes?

This is scary stuff for me - everything backed up though!!!!

Chris

Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: tarbat on May 06, 2011, 08:50:41 PM
Right click on the table and select "Empty Table (routes)".  Then open the empty table and use the Import wizard.
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: Pinza on May 07, 2011, 12:43:19 PM
Quote from: tarbat on May 06, 2011, 08:50:41 PM
Right click on the table and select "Empty Table (routes)".  Then open the empty table and use the Import wizard.

Hmm, got as far as emptying my routes table but struggled with the import wizard in SQLite Maestro.

Import button was greyed out and don't know anything about XML file structures so gave up after several hours!

However, I started again from scratch - this time using SQLite Manager (a free add-on for Firefox) and exported and imported using CSV structure which I am more comfortable with.

Just fired up ANRB and all working fine.

Many, many thanks Tarbat for your 'query' to convert the data from the Yahoo groups, and subsequent assistance via this this thread

Happy boy now!!!
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: tarbat on May 07, 2011, 01:52:16 PM
Quote from: Pinza on May 07, 2011, 12:43:19 PMMany, many thanks Tarbat for your 'query' to convert the data from the Yahoo groups, and subsequent assistance via this this thread

Happy boy now!!!

Glad you got it working.
Title: Re: Routes situation
Post by: nortonbeak on June 18, 2011, 01:36:54 PM
I have just got my Routes database up to date. I downloaded the latest file from PP-Logs. Then I used SQLite (which is free!) to run Tarbats little SQ routine.

My thanks to Tarbat for the routine :-)

If anyone wants to try it, SQLite can be downloaded at

http://www.sqlite.org/download.html (http://www.sqlite.org/download.html)