New database files to be available soon...

["John C. Peterson" <jaypee netcom com>]

   For those of you that have been patiently waiting for updated
database files, they should be available soon. I have a little crunch
at work that will delay them until at least 24-th Feb, but they should
be ready for download soon after that.

   As some of you may have noticed, the NFDC web site is no longer
accessible without a pasword. That is unfortunate, because it would be
nice to keep all elements of fplan to be free of charge. However, the
raw National Airspace Database files can now be purchased on ISO 9660
CD-ROM for $36, by writing to the FAA, see;

	http://www.faa.gov/nfdcata100/120/120nadd.html

There were several modifications to the conversion process, but it
still works in roughly the same way. The raw NASD files are converted
to delimited files using awk scripts (the files produced by this step
are quite similar to the once freely available NFDC data files, except
they are colon ":" delimited, rather than comma delimited). These files
are then converted to fplan format using faaconv (now called nasdconv).
Much of the work involved was modifying nasdconv to allow for the
different record types found in the airport database files.  The extra
records are not used quite yet, but will be when the time comes to add
new data fields to the database files.

   I am looking forward to getting the (US) database issue behind
us.  Solving this problem certainly used up most of my recent time
allocation for fplan. However, this was a real problem that needed
attention, fplan wouldn't be worth much without reasonable database
files. I'm much more interested in spending my time expanding the
capabilities of fplan. My next planned addition is the ability to
specify winds aloft as a function of altitude, and have fplan figure
everything out (rather than giving multiple "wind" commands for each
leg).

Regards, John

-- 
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