flyagogo blog

Last week I attended a safety seminar at the West Valley Flying Club. Patti Andrews, flight instructor at West Valley, explained to us what it takes to fly the Bay Tour - a scenic route over the city of San Francisco, Sausalito, the Bridges and so on. One thing that became clear is the importance of knowing about temporary flight restrictions well before take off! Especially in a busy city like San Francisco a TFR can pop up very quickly and unnoticed.

With this in mind I took off for an internet cafe this weekend and while sipping a large cup of coffee implemented an important new feature for the flyagogo website: Flyagogo.net now overlays current temporary flight restrictions on all the charts. More enhancements are coming soon. Stadium TFRs - the 3 nm circle around any large stadium during a game - will be included. As was suggested to me at the seminar there will also be a link to the game schedule for each stadium so that one can easily check if a stadium TFR is active or not.

A word of caution though: Please be aware that any pilot must call a flight service station and read all NOTAMS before going on a flight. There is no guarantee that all TFRs are displayed completely and correctly on this website. The same is true for any other website by the way including the official FAA website. So be careful!

Happy flying!

Some users of the flyagogo.net website have asked me to display fuel prices with each airport and FBO. The problem with most fuel price databases on the web is that they depend on pilots and FBOs to keep them up to date. Often one is required to check several websites to get a somewhat reliable idea of what the current fuel price might be. Rather than starting yet another fuel price database here on flyagogo.net I decided to provide you with direct links to some of the exisiting ones. In that way you can easily check several sources before take off: Simply search for an airport as usual and then check under the Links tab! Are you missing any important website that should be linked here? Let me know and I will add it.

And there is another new feature: Look for the download as pdf icon for each airport. Click it and you will get a printable, kneeboard-formatted pdf file with all the important airport information, like runways, communication frequencies, and everything else. If you are missing anything that would be useful let me know. As a bonus the pdf file will also contain a high resolution color excerpt from the sectional chart. Enjoy.

Here are two new features that have been added to the website recently, and an outlook of what is coming next:

• Look for the pdf icon next to a flightplan. Click it to create a kneeboard formatted flightplan. Print it, fold it, and clip it on your kneeboard!
• The flightplanner can now apply a wind correction. The default flight plan is still for no winds conditions. However now one can click on the change wind button and enter something like “300@10″ for a 10 kts wind coming from 300 direction. Voila! Now it should be easy to check what effect a headwind would have on your fuel planning for example.

This is only the beginning. I am planning to add a kneeboard formatted download as pdf link for the airports next. Concerning the printout of flightplans there should be some exciting possibilities here. Imagine a high resolution color pdf booklet of all sectional chart segments along a planned route - ready for use in the cockpit. As always I welcome any ideas and comments that you might have. This is your chance to get exactly what you always wanted. My e-mail is info@flyagogo.net

Fly safe and have fun!

On Sunday evening the power supply of the flyagogo.net server suddenly switched itself off and refused to turn on again! A two day long struggle trying to bring a replacement server online ended just now when FedEx delivered the replacement power supply: flyagogo.net is back online All features that had been disabled temporarily are active again. No data was lost. Phew… The good news is that if it ever happens again we will be prepared a lot better. A replacement server has been set up and can be activated on the spot in case of another hardware failure.

Just before the server went offline, I had posted a pretty cool new feature which allows any website to offer current, draggable, and zoomable sectional charts to its visitors: The “Charts API”. Please give it a try and let me know if it works for you. Instructions on how to put a chart on your own webpage are under the “Charts API” section of the help pages:

http://www.flyagogo.net/help

Have fun!

Do you have a homepage, an aviation related blog or website, or are you the web-master of a flying club? Then you are invited to include a draggable interactive sectional chart on your webpage - centered on your home airport. flyagogo.net now publishes an API (application programming interface) trough which any website can offer current, interactive sectional charts to its visitors. All you need to do is to include a few lines of html code into your webpage. To see an example and get more information see the “Charts API” section of the flyagogo help page:

http://www.flyagogo.net/help

The Charts API program is currently in its beta phase and offers basic functionality. More features may be added in the future depending on your feedback. Let me know what you want to do with the interactive flyagogo maps!

I hope you find this new feature useful. If you have any trouble getting it to work please don’t hesitate to write to me at info@flyagogo.net.

Choosing the right cruise altitude for a cross country fligth can be tedious! Many factors play a role in the decision making process, including the current winds, the desired fuel consumption, and last but not least the terrain along the planned flight path.

The last point has just become significantly easier: The flyagogo.net flight planner will display a profile view of the elevation along the planned route of the flight! The flight route is overlayed to the terrain with the same colors and markings as in the sectional chart view to make life easier. The profile view is draggable and zoomable just like the chart view. Each horizontal gray line represents 1000 feet.

As always I hope that you like this new feature. It involved a lot of coding. I am sure there are still some bugs around. Let me know if you find any so that I can fix them quickly (info@flyagogo.net).

Happy flying!

Flyagogo.net has gained a couple of advanced flight planning features over the weekend:

• Manage several customizable aircraft profiles (climb, cruise, descent air speed, climb and descent rate, and fuel usage)
• Automatic determination of leg time and total flight time.
• Automatic determination of fuel consumption.
• Automatic determination of the top of climb (TOC) and top of descent points (TOD).
• Save your favorite flight plans for later use.

In addition there have been many usability improvements and bug fixes which I will not list here. Some of the new functions which need to store user specific data require a free registration with flyagogo.net.

I hope you find the new tools useful. Give it a try when planning your next flight! As always I am very interested in your feedback: info@flyagogo.net.

Have fun!

Since today flyagogo.net integrates an easy to use flight plannig tool. Simply type a flight plan into the search box, let’s say my first solo cross country flight:

KPAO-KTCY-KMOD

and the flight path will be shown on the map. It’s as easy as that. Also the distances and headings for each leg will automatically be tabulated for your convenience. I hope you like this new feature and make use of it when planning for your next cross country flight. Forget about that ruler and foldable sectional charts. The future is online

Here is a bit more detail for those who are interested. The flight planner accepts three types of waypoints:

1. airports - use the 4 letter identifier starting with the letter K
2. navaids - use the 3 letter navaid id
3. airspace fixes - use the 5 letter identifier

The lines drawn between waypoints are in fact not straight - they are geodetic lines on the surface of the earth and represent the shortest connection between two points.

The flight planner is still in it’s beta phase. I plan to add more functionality as time goes on. As always I welcome any suggestions, comments, or ideas that you might have concerning the website. Please drop me a line at info@flyagogo.net

Have fun!

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could tell flyagogo.net about your home airport? It would then automatically show the charts, satellite and radar images from your home region whenever you visit the flyagogo.net webpage!

Good news: Now you can do exactly that and more. From now on flyagogo.net features a personalized homepage. Get a free account with flyagogo.net and configure your homeairport plus your favourite map view and save bookmarks to the views that you are using most often.

Want a satellite weather picture of the Bay Area with one mouse click? No problem: Move the view in place the way you like it, then press “add current view” to save a bookmark- voila! Try it yourself. Click on “personalize” at the top of the flyagogo.net webpage and then on “create new account”, follow the instructions and you are ready to go.

As always I hope you find this useful, and if there’s any problem with personalizing your homepage - don’t hesitate to drop me a line at info@flyagogo.net!

The post’s title says it all: If you have never heard of the Google Earth application - this is the time to get started with it. Google Earth displays high resolution satellite pictures on a three dimensional earth. It is an excellent flight planning tool. Take a virtual flight over the Grand Canyon or fly over a mountain airport to get a feeling for the terrain before actually going there. Enough said, if you want to know more download the free application from earth.google.com and start playing with it.

And why am I telling you all of this: Flyagogo.net now provides Google Earth Links for all airports. Look for the image next to the airport name and click it for a virtual flight to that airport. These links will only work if google Earth has been installed on your computer.

Note for MacOSX/Safari users: The Safari browser does not automatically start Google Earth when clicking a Google Earth Link. This is good for security reasons, but it makes life just a bit harder since you have to download a Google Earth Link first and then open it with the Google Earth application. Fortunately there is an easy workaround. Download this file

com.apple.DownloadAssessment.plist

and safe it under that name in your home>library>preferences folder. Also make sure that you have Open safe files after downloading checked in Safari’s preferences.