I've got a new mashup that's tailored for pre-flight planning for U.S.
general aviation pilots. It displays markers for airports in an area,
along with weather info. Another unique feature is that I added a
custom map type called "chart" that shows the corresponding
aeronautical chart (zoom level 6 to 14, contiguous U.S. states only).
Google Map's satellite view is especially useful for seeing the layout
of runways and taxiways before landing at an unfamiliar airport.

I'm using a PHP/MySQL back-end and wrote (a lot of) custom C++ code to
convert the aeronautical charts to match Google Maps projection and
tile size. The tool-tip pop-ups are displayed using J. Shirley's
GxMarker (at least until Google implements it).

I'm still tweaking it, but would appreciate any input. I know it works
for Firefox and IE6, but would like to hear from a Safari user. I have
a few bugs to work out with Hawaii and Alaska. I'd also like to do
something nicer than a pop-up window for the extended airport info.

Thanks,
Dave
www.runwayfinder.com

On Aug 18, 2005, at 1:46 PM, Davepar wrote:

This looks really, *really* nice!  I'm using Safari 2 on OS X  
10.4.2.  It works darn near perfectly, from what I can tell.  The  
extended airport info window (getinfo.php) is pretty Spartan,  
however; white background, black text, and the text takes up only  
about half of the window on the left.  Don't know if you intended to  
have a nicer display... :-)

I can't find 4NY8; why is that?  It's semi-public, and much nicer  
than 11NY (well, it's paved, at least!). :-)

--
Brian Lalor / bla...@bravo5.org
     Notmeflex (nŏt mē´ flěks) n. The involuntary act of hitting  
the brakes
     when you see a cop, regardless of whether you're speeding or not.

On Aug 18, 2005, at 2:10 PM, Brian Lalor wrote:

Nevermind, it's not an airport, and I had filtered only airports.

What's your source for the digitized charts?  That's really slick!

--
Brian Lalor / bla...@bravo5.org
     Notmeflex (nŏt mē´ flěks) n. The involuntary act of hitting  
the brakes
     when you see a cop, regardless of whether you're speeding or not.

Looks very cool!  (I was about to report the AK bug, but looks like you
knew about it already.)  Just one question: What do the colors of marker
mean?  Blue is apparently major, and grey is minor (towerless)... but
what about the other colors?  I'm not a pilot; perhaps this is obvious
to the intended audience?

        Thanks,
        -=- James Mastros

On Aug 18, 2005, at 2:47 PM, James Mastros wrote:

Scroll down about half an inch. :-)

--
Brian Lalor / bla...@bravo5.org
     Notmeflex (nŏt mē´ flěks) n. The involuntary act of hitting  
the brakes
     when you see a cop, regardless of whether you're speeding or not.

I'd like to have the height of the map adjust so that the legend is
always visible, but I couldn't find a method that worked for both
Firefox and IE. I'm kind of a stylesheet newb, so I'm sure there's a
way.

Yes, the extended airport info pop-up window is pretty spartan. I'd
like to make the right pane tabbed, so it's easy to switch between the
airport list, extended info, etc. I need to read up on Javascript a bit
more.

The aeronautical charts are public domain and available from the gov on
DVD for a small price. The only problem is that they are Lambert
Conformal Conic projection instead of Mercator. They use a format
called GeoTIFF that nicely registers the charts to geographic
coordinates. However, the bounds of the map are not provided. Needless
to say I spent a fair amount of time getting those charts to work in
Google Maps.

Thanks for the comments and verification on Safari.

After the page has loaded, you can use JavaScript to adjust the size of
the map DIV along these lines:

function windowHeight() {
  return window.innerHeight ? window.innerHeight :
document.documentElement.clientHeight;
  }

mapDIV.style.height = (windowHeight() - mapDIV.offsetTop -
legend.offsetHeight) + "px";