Missing info for many airports in France

[Régis]

Some information seems to be outdated or missing (for example the type "altiport" seems to often be absent).

I would be willing to update everything nicely with a script but cannot find an updated database from the SIA or DGAC in France. I could use the updated VAC maps published every month, but that would need a considerably higher amount of time.

If someone has a clue where to find such an up-to-date database, json or xml....

Thanks !

rd

[Michael Paus]

I have recently written a piece of software to extract the VAC maps from the French AIP. I also do some parsing of some of the pages. If you could provide me with a list of data you are missing, with a corresponding pointer into the VAC pages, I could find out whether it is technically feasible to automatically extract this data into a JSON file.

Background: I am the maintainer of the AIP Browser DE and in this context I am currently working on extending this service to the french and other AIPs. (Sorry, the page is still in German but the software is in English.)

[webmaster]

Hi,

and sorry for the late reply. It would be absolutely awesome to have a json file with a list of reporting points for each airport. To link an VRP to an airport in openaip, it would be best to have the name and the coordinates of the airport that the VRP belongs to. Would this be possible with your parser?

Cheers,

Stephan

[Michael Paus]

I could parse some of the pages of these PDFs. Example:
https://www.sia.aviation-civile.gouv.fr/dvd/eAIP_16_MAY_2024/Atlas-VAC/PDF_AIPparSSection/VAC/AD/AD-2.LFAB.pdf
Could you point me to an example where you can get the reporting points from such a page? I can only parse the text pages. The pages which the charts cannot be parsed because some important information for the text processing is missing in them (by accident or on purpose?).

Régis schrieb am Freitag, 10. Mai 2024 um 17:09:07 UTC+2:

[webmaster]

Oh, nevermind. I misunderstood the first post. If it is possible to extract the following parts from the pdf that you linked, this would help a ton:

• - name of airfield
• altitude
• coordinates
• ICAO code (upper right corner)
  
• runway designators + dimensions + surface + TODA /ASDA / LDA
• 
  

Would this be possible? If so, we can complement all current data for France which would be absolutely awesome!

Cheers,

Stephan

[Régis]

I have made diverse tries to parse the openly available Sia maps starting from the pdfs. My results are mixed but I am sure this could be done investing more time.

I have much better results using the openai chatgpt 4o api. The results are almost perfect, the only problem being to extract the preferred runway out of the map itself. Sometimes chatgpt is correct, sometimes it's not. I will make a try with a 2 step approach. 1. ask chagpt to extract the json below 2. asking it to give me the preferred runway direction.

```

{ "runways": [ { "runway": "13", "QFU": 126, "dimensions": "820 x 30", "surface": "Paved", "strength": "5.7 t", "TODA": 820, "ASDA": 820, "LDA": 820 }, { "runway": "31", "QFU": 306, "dimensions": "820 x 30", "surface": "Paved", "strength": "5.7 t", "TODA": 820, "ASDA": 820, "LDA": 820 }, { "runway": "13L", "QFU": 126, "dimensions": "650 x 60", "surface": "Unpaved", "strength": null, "TODA": 650, "ASDA": 650, "LDA": 650 }, { "runway": "31R", "QFU": 306, "dimensions": "650 x 60", "surface": "Unpaved", "strength": null, "TODA": 650, "ASDA": 650, "LDA": 650 } ], "preferred_runways": [ "13", "31" ], "lighting_aids": "NIL", "radio_frequencies": { "A/A": "119.005 (FR seulement/only)" } }

```

[Régis]

Not all of our airfields have reporting points (I don't know how it is done in Germany). Bigger airfields (with ctr) have thought. For example :

https://www.sia.aviation-civile.gouv.fr/dvd/eAIP_16_MAY_2024/Atlas-VAC/PDF_AIPparSSection/VAC/AD/AD-2.LFKB.pdf

In that case, you will find them on the map as well as in a table further down the pdf.

[mpMediaSoft GmbH]

Using my software it would currently not be possible to extract the data you would like to have because it is all located on the pages with the garbled fonts. I asked for alternatives on Stack Overflow and this is what I got:
<https://stackoverflow.com/questions/78502875/how-can-i-copy-extract-text-from-a-specific-kind-of-pdf-file/78504231?noredirect=1#comment138402827_78504231>

I am now experimenting with the suggested tool pdftotext which gives me quite good results but would still need a lot of manual tweaking.

Your approach with "openai chatgpt 4o" sounds very interesting. How did you do that? What did you actually ask it and how much manual tweaking was necessary to obtain the JSON file below?

Am 20.05.24 um 11:40 schrieb Régis:

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[Frank van der Hulst]

Over the last 10 years, I have developed my own Pdf text extraction tool, specifically to scrape NZ airspace data from published pdfs. This is based on the Java pdfBox toolkit, which I think may be include the pdftotext tool you mention? My tool handles all the NZ airspace tables with word-wrapped columns, etc, and produces a rectangular array of cells, each containing text.

I then parse the text, and where the airspace boundary follows a natural feature (e.g. river) I get the data for that from a topo map. This end of things is probably no use to you. I don't have to do any manual editing to the output (although I have "tuned" it somewhat to cope with the peculiarities of the NZ airspace PDF files, so there's some kludgy code that's a bit specific to NZ). It's a command line app that runs in Windows or Linux, and outputs in a variety of formats, including OpenAir, Cup, KML, etc.

The whole tool isn't in a state that it could be handed over to all and sundry, and probably never will be. But the Pdf handling is quite stable and fairly general, so it may be useful to you if you're a Java developer? Probably what I should do is extract the Pdf processing to a separate project and put that up on Github?

Frank

[Peter Kemme]

In Germany Reporting points are only used (with 1 exception) in connection with CTR´s.

Nevertheless I´ve updated all french reporting points in 2023 according to the data published via AIP.

And I´m looking into each AMDT of french AIP and VAC-atlas.

From my point of view, there is no need to create a software to update the french reporting points.

Peter