<contrib>Current author of this document.</contrib>
</author>
<author>
<firstname>John</firstname>
<surname>Petterson</surname>
<affiliation>
<address><email>jcp@eskimo.com</email></address>
</affiliation>
<contrib>Original author since 2000 from version 1.0 to 1.5.</contrib>
</author>
</authorgroup>
<abstract>
<para>
This document is intended to provide pointers to software packages
that run under GNU/Linux and are usefull to pilots (private, commercial or military),
airlines, airports or any actors in the aeronautical domain. I want
to encourage everybody to contribute to this document, either by providing
pointers to existing software, or by writing new application for GNU/Linux.
</para>
</abstract>
</bookinfo>
<preface><title>Introduction</title>
<para>The business and sport of aviation is about as mission critical as any human endeavor gets. Pilots have an implicit expectation for their aircraft to be well designed, ergonomic, predictable, reliable, and safe to operate. Certificated aircraft are designed and built to engineering and quality standards that far exceed those of <emphasis>any</emphasis> other consumer product. In my opinion, any computing environment used for aviation related applications should meet similar high standards. I also believe that the open software development model and the GNU/Linux operating system is the computing environment with the greatest potential to meet such high standards.</para>
<para>This document is intended to provide pointers to software packages that run under GNU/Linux and are usefull to pilots (private, commercial or military), airlines, airports or any actors in the aeronautical domain. Most of the software packages mentioned in this release are freely distributable, and come with source code. However, I will gladly include entries for commercial products from any vendors who are GNU/Linux friendly.</para>
<para>My own personal interests center around air traffic flow management since I have worked almost 4 years for Eurocontrol providing simulations to increase the safety and effeciency in the european sky. I wanted to be pilot, but with my color-blindness I have a bit abadon it. I know work for both USA and Europe world of traffic management, and it's exciting to see the difference and the history which created those.</para>
<para>Each of the software pointers in this document consists of a brief description of the software, information on who wrote it, where to find it, and user comments in some cases. In the interest of brevity, I did not include explicit pointers to source code or binaries when they are available through reasonably obvious links on the software's home page.</para>
<section><title>Audience</title>
<para>
This document is written for all actors in aeronautic domain :
pilots (private or pro), airlines, airports, <acronym>ATC</acronym> entities, etc.
<revremark>Updates and new applications added.</revremark>
</revision>
<revision>
<revnumber>2.1</revnumber>
<date>2006-03-13</date>
<authorinitials>nd</authorinitials>
<revremark>Updates and new applications added.</revremark>
</revision>
<revision>
<revnumber>2.0</revnumber>
<date>2005-05-21</date>
<authorinitials>nd</authorinitials>
<revremark>New release and rewriting of the whole document.</revremark>
</revision>
<revision>
<revnumber>1.5</revnumber>
<date>2005-01-15</date>
<authorinitials>jp</authorinitials>
<revremark>Added new entries for the Gpsdrive, GPLIGC, JFlight, and KFlog packages.
Five years between updates is rather ridiculous, time to turn this HOWTO
over to someone with more time!</revremark>
</revision>
<revision>
<revnumber>1.4</revnumber>
<date>2000-10-14</date>
<authorinitials>jp</authorinitials>
<revremark>Added a new entry for the AirLog logbook package. Added some additional
references to the section on embedded hardware, as well as a short blurb
about the availability of GNU/Linux for the iPaq handheld. Updated the
contact information for the author, (new e-mail address).</revremark>
</revision>
<revision>
<revnumber>1.3</revnumber>
<date></date>
<authorinitials>jp</authorinitials>
<revremark>Added a small section on hardware, mostly pointers to other resources.
I also added entries for several newly discovered packages;
Gpsd, GPSMan, and JEEPS.</revremark>
</revision>
<revision>
<revnumber>1.2</revnumber>
<date></date>
<authorinitials>jp</authorinitials>
<revremark>I added some new and more focused application categories. For some of
them, I added pointers to other information resources that address issues
related to that particular application area, but from a more generic,
and non-Linux specific perspective. Also added entries for several newly
discovered software packages. I removed the references to the Linux
Documentation Project, the maintainers never responded in any way to my
request to add this document to the archive?</revremark>
</revision>
<revision>
<revnumber>1.1</revnumber>
<date></date>
<authorinitials>jp</authorinitials>
<revremark>Added information about the linux-aviation mailing list.
Some minor changes in grammar, as well as a whole bunch of corrections
to my consistent abuse of punctuation. Thanks to my good friend David
Moore for these corrections.</revremark>
</revision>
<revision>
<revnumber>1.0</revnumber>
<date></date>
<authorinitials>jp</authorinitials>
<revremark>First public release.</revremark>
</revision>
</revhistory>
</para>
</section>
<section><title>Contributions</title>
<para>Thanks to John C. Peterson the original author of this document and for his support.</para>
</section>
<section><title>Feedback</title>
<para>Missing information, missing links, missing characters? Mail it to the maintainer of this document: <address><email>nicolas.dufour@nemoworld.info</email></address></para>
</section>
<section><title>Copyright information</title>
<!-- The LDP recommends, but doesn't require, the GFDL -->
<para>
This document, <emphasis>GNU/Linux Aviation HOWTO</emphasis>,
is copyrighted (c) 2005-2006 by <linklinkend="about">Nicolas Dufour</link>.
</para>
<para>
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
License, Version 1.1 or any later version published
by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections,
with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license is available at
<ulinkurl="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html">
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html</ulink>.
</para>
<para>
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
</para>
<para>
Java is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems Inc.
</para>
</section>
</preface>
<toc></toc>
<chapter><title>Flight</title>
<sect1><title>Planning</title>
<sect2><title>fplan</title>
<para>The fplan application is designed to assist general aviation pilots in
creating flight plans for cross country flights in powered aircraft.
It reads a planfile containing a description of the flight: departure
and destination airports, navigation aids, intermediate waypoints, winds
aloft, fuel consumption rates, and produces a flight plan including
wind corrected magnetic headings, distance, estimated time and fuel
consumption for each leg, latitude, longitude and <xreflinkend="vor"/> fixes for each
checkpoint, etc. A graphical preview of the flight is available on
systems with X11 Windows and the XView Toolkit.</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Author</emphasis>: Steve Tynor</para></listitem>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Maintainer</emphasis>: John C. Peterson <email>jcp@eskimo.com</email></para></listitem>
<para>Flight Navigation Planner lets you make flight plans based on known airports, navaids, fixes, or cities. You can use the sectional charts, wacs, or the vector/terrain planning charts. It calculates headings, winds, time, and fuel. It features Airways-based Auto-Routing, Climb and Descent calculations (a/c type based), Fuel Stop Planning, Auto-Route around MOAS and Restricted Airspace, Hi-Res Weather Radar Overlay, Viewing of current sectional, wac, and IFR charts, the ability to see a route over TFRs, detailed nexrad radar overlays over your routes, Terrain Profiles with cloud ceilings, and the ability to upload flight plans to GPS.</para>
<para>Flyway allows the user to find and enter U.S. waypoints (airports, navaids, and fixes), then it calculates courses, wind corrections, and travel times. Information about the waypoints is provided (including frequencies, elevation, fuel availability, and runway descriptions). The route data can also be used to fill in an editable FAA Flight Plan form, fetch basic weather information from the internet, and display a very rough map.</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Author</emphasis>: Doug Bell </para></listitem>
<para>OpenFlyers is an aircrafts (airplanes, gliders, ulms, etc.) online booking system opensource for flying clubs and more generally for everyone who need to share one or more aircrafts planification.</para>
<para>This booking system is based on the PHP language and the MySQL database. It is opensource (under GPL licence) and can be freely downloaded.</para>
<para>gpsd is a service daemon that monitors a GPS attached to a host computer through a serial or USB port, making its data on the location/course/velocity of the sensor available to be queried on TCP port 2947 of the host computer. With gpsd, multiple GPS client applications (such as navigational and wardriving software) can share access to a GPS without contention or loss of data. Also, gpsd responds to queries with a format that is substantially easier to parse than the NMEA 0183 emitted by most GPSes. The gpsd distribution includes a linkable C service library and a Python module that developers of gpsd-aware applications can use to encapsulate all communication with gpsd.</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Author</emphasis>: Eric S. Raymond <email>esr@snark.thyrsus.com</email></para></listitem>
<para> KFLog is an OpenSource program aimed at glider pilots. It gives You a powerfull tool to plan You flight tasks and analyse Your flights afterwards.</para>
<para>KFLog is the only flight analyser program available for GNU/Linux to be recognized by the <ulinkurl="http://www.fai.org/gliding/">FAI IGC</ulink>.</para>
<para>KFLog projects the flights on a digital vectormap, that contains not only airfields and airspaces, but a complete elevation-map, roads, cities, rivers, and lots of other interesting objects.</para>
<para>pyRadar is retrieves and displays radar images from NOAA's NEXRAD radar stations, which are located around the United States and its territories. These images are released into the public domain on behalf of the American public.</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Authors</emphasis>: John Diaz</para></listitem>
<para>WeatherCheck is a program that uses Java Swing to prompt for a US zip code and display the local forecast from the National Weather Service. It also provides the extended forecast and dBZ radar information.</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Authors</emphasis>: Teri Solow</para></listitem>
<para>The Surface Management System (SMS) increases shared situational awareness of airport surface operations between the Air Traffic Control Tower (ATCT), the Ramp Tower, the air carriers that operate at an airport, and the various airport authorities and other ATC facilities. By increasing situational awareness and providing tools for airport surface traffic management, SMS improves the efficiency and flexibility of airport surface operations.</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Author</emphasis>: Metron Aviation Inc. <email>bizdevelopment@metronaviation.com</email></para></listitem>
<para>The FlightGear flight simulator project is an open-source, multi-platform, cooperative flight simulator development project. Source code for the entire project is available and licensed under the GNU General Public License.</para>
<para>The goal of the FlightGear project is to create a sophisticated flight simulator framework for use in research or academic environments, for the development and pursuit of other interesting flight simulation ideas, and as an end-user application.</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Author</emphasis>: Curtis L. Olson <email>curt0001@flightgear.org</email></para></listitem>
<para>X-Plane is a flight simulator that reads in the geometric shape of any aircraft and then figures out how that aircraft will fly. It does this via an engineering process called "blade element theory", which involves breaking the aircraft down into many small elements and then finding the forces on each little element many times per second. These forces are then converted into accelerations, which are then integrated to velocities and positions. This gives X-Plane the most realistic flight model available for personal computers.</para>
<para>JSBSim is an object-oriented (C++), multi-platform, 6-DOF, Flight Dynamics Model (FDM). It can be run as a standalone, batch-mode flight simulator (no graphical displays), or integrated with FlightGear or other flight simulator.</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Author</emphasis>: Jon S. Berndt <email>jsb@hal-pc.org</email></para></listitem>
<para>Atlas aims to produce and display high quality charts of the world for users of FlightGear, an open source flight simulator. This is achieved through two main parts: The map creator (simply called Map) and the Atlas viewer.</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Author</emphasis>: David Luff <email>daveluff@users.sourceforge.net</email></para></listitem>
<para>OpenGC is a multi-platform, multi-simulator, open-source C++ tool for developing and implementing high quality glass cockpit displays for simulated flightdecks. Our goal is simple: support all widely available flight simulators, all widely available operating systems, and provide a selection of gauges that mirrors the diversity of interests within the flightsimming community. I hope you enjoy OpenGC, and encourage you to contribute in any way possible!</para>
<para>The Glass Cockpit Library (libGC) is created for the Airbus A340 Glass Cockpit (a340gc) which is an Open Source project. The a340gc project is part of the Airbus A340 simulator project of the IRADIS Foundation. The goal of libGC and a340gc is to create a free framework that can be used to build a glass cockpit upon.</para>
<para>This is only a part of a bigger project carried by Iradis to create a realistic A340 cockpit with a full view. See this <ulinkurl="http://www.iradis.org/">website</ulink> for more details.</para>
<para>Data which dont change often like airport position (even if I have see airport jumps in data sometimes ;-). It's called also static or semi-static data.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para><emphasis>Dynamic data</emphasis></para>
<para>Data which change very often like flight position or traffic load in a controlled sector.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>Usually, the second type is computed with the help of the first one, so it's very important to take care of the accuracy of the environment data : right geographic location (lat,long), up-to-date semi-static data according to an activity (current capacity of an airport), or even new performance data for a new aircraft.</para>
<sect1><title>Environment</title>
<sect2><title>DAFIF</title>
<para>The Digital Aeronautical Flight Information File (or DAFIF) is a set of files that contain data on airports, navaids, waypoints, special use airspace and other facts relevant to flying in the entire world. This data is provided by the US military, through the <ulinkurl="http://www.nga.mil">National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA)</ulink>, and is primarily developed for the benefit of military aeronautical operations, but was made available to the general public.</para>
<para>Except for the United States, which is also covered by data provided by the <xreflinkend="faa"/>, it is usually the ONLY comprehensive digital data available for pilots. Other countries either don't provide digital data at all, or they do it through a proprietary web interface or in non-reusable formats (like PDF files of scans of paper documents). Even within the US, there is data that is available in the DAFIF which is not in the <xreflinkend="faa"/> data. For instance, the navaid.com database generators use the DAFIF data to find ICAO identifiers for airports in Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and other places where there 3 letter <xreflinkend="faa"/> id is not enough data to generate the ICAO id.</para>
<para><emphasis>Attention!</emphasis> This source will be removed at october 2006 of the public access for several reasons. Look <ulinkurl="http://www.navaid.com/dafif.html">here</ulink> for more details and support the existence of DAFIF. You can also help creating a replacement solution <ulinkurl="http://xcski.com/navdata/bin/view/NavData/WebHome">here</ulink>.</para>
<para>This site was launched as a resource for those who enjoy listening to live Air Traffic Control (<acronym>ATC</acronym>)...aviation enthusiasts, student pilots, student air traffic controllers, flight simulation enthusiasts, FBO operators, airline operators, and anyone with an interest in aviation communications.</para>
<para>A good site to listen, discover and perhaps also learn the language. They propose several live feeds in USA, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Australia, Columbia, or even Dutch caribean !</para>
<para>This new website is designed to maintain an up-to-date list of opensource projects for the aeronautic world, and help the maintenance of the this current howto.</para>
<appendixid="about"><title>About the author</title>
<para>I was born in 1973 in the little town of <ulinkurl="http://www.ville-mont-saint-aignan.fr/">Mont St. Aignan</ulink> near <ulinkurl="http://www.rouentourisme.com/">Rouen</ulink> in <ulinkurl="http://www.normandy-tourism.org/">Normandie</ulink> (France). I grow up in the south of Ile-de-France (region near Paris) surrounded by wheat and corn fields :-) and a sugar factory where I used to walk in it, smelling and eating sugar.</para>
<para>Always attracted by sciences and particularly geology, I got a degree (BA) of Geophysic/Geochemistry and try to get the next degree but fall back to another direction : computer science. I got my master of computer science applied to geosciences in 1998 at <ulinkurl="http://www.upmc.fr">Paris</ulink>.</para>
<para>I got my first job at <ulinkurl="http://www.eurocontrol.int/eec/public/subsite_homepage/homepage.html">Eurocontrol</ulink> and it changes a lot my life. Even if I worked for Schlumberger for 6 months (big oil service company), I now work for 6 years for a little french company (<ulinkurl="http://www.neometsys.fr/">Neometsys</ulink>) in aeronautic.</para>