dan

dan

Well Known Member
I just finished a beta version of my new "great circle winds aloft interpolator." This will show you the winds aloft at various altitudes and locations along a specified route. The goal is to help you pick an optimal altitude for a cross-country flight.

I emphasize the word BETA. But please give it a shot...go to:

http://www.rvproject.com/wx/

...and click on "Winds" at the top. Enter your departure and destination airports, and click Go.

Let me know if you see any funky behavior.

)_( Dan
RV-7 N714D
http://www.rvproject.com
 
Stop the madness

Ok Dan, this has to end now. It was funny at first. Now you're starting to make the rest of us look like slackers!

Seriously though...awesome job!
 
Crosswind component, heading, and groundspeed

Dan-

Great tool!

Why not crosswind component too? While you're at it, why not have the user enter an airspeed, then calculate the required heading to fly the ground course and the expected ground speed?
 
Kiss

No No. Dont do anything more complicated.
THere are plenty of complicated free wind calculators with free flight planning on the web. I use fltplan.com

I like the simplicity so I can use it on my PDA while at the hanger ready for launch.
Kahuna
:cool:
 
Brian130 said:
Very impressive. How bout a "0" on the "Number of Midpoints"?
Click to expand...
Brian,
I think he has just snapped a string between your end points and gives you winds aloft for the number of equally spaced points between those.
If you pick one point and nothing changes there, then nothing changes.
Picking zero points would give you winds aloft only at the start and at the end, which you get anyway no matter how many points you pick.
Unless I am interpreting what he has done incorrectly.

-Mike
 
Great software!

Dan... great stuff and very useful.

Gave interesting numbers for altitudes for a flight from Tucson to Riverside.

One idea...

How about a field in between Origin and Destination for OPTIONAL way points - could still be airports. I find I often can't fly in much of a straight line due to restricted areas, mountains, swamps, Class B's etc..... This would help with dog leg flights. You could then divide each leg into the number of mid-points selected.

gil in Tucson

PS the 'swamps' bit was a joke - living in AZ....:)
 
Do 2 queries instead

az_gila said:
How about a field in between Origin and Destination for OPTIONAL way points - could still be airports. I find I often can't fly in much of a straight line due to restricted areas, mountains, swamps, Class B's etc..... This would help with dog leg flights. You could then divide each leg into the number of mid-points selected.
Click to expand...

Give 'em an inch (for FREE I might add) and they want a mile... :rolleyes:

Just do two queries, one with A to B, and then another with B to C.

But in reality, will the results be all that surprising? I mean...how far from the course centerline do we really deviate on the average cross-country leg? Maybe 50nm at most? I'm sure there are exceptions, and for those exceptions you can certainly do multiple queries using the tool as-is, not requiring any more coding on my part!

The point of this tool, TODAY at least, is to give you a "sense" of the winds so you can pick an altitude on an educated basis. It does interpolation between wind reporting stations, which is better (I believe) than any other tool out there currently.

At some point in the future, this tool may evolve to become a real "flight planner optimizer" dealie, but I think it solves 90% of the problem today as-is, even if you have to do multiple queries.

I only have so much free time...so I'm squirming out of having to do more coding. Hey, it's a FREE tool!

)_( Dan
RV-7 N714D
http://www.rvproject.com
 
pda compatable?

Dan

great job eh.

Does a great job here in Canada as well. Tried to get it to work on my Blackberry but it wont go to that menu. So just an idea to a talanted man with limited free time promoting a free product....can we make it pda (blackberry) friendly to help us when we are flight planning away from home?

Keep up the great work

Wayne
-7a in the paint shop
 
Southern Hemisphere.

Brillaint Dan. Blew me away that your data source bought up winds for Melbourne Australia to Perth Australia.
Of course, the way to apply the data depends on knowing your gain in TAS with altitude. No point in staying low if the head/tail wind is only a few knots worse at altitude where your TAS will be so much higher.
No, I am not going to ask you to modify it to output GS from TAS.
Stick with KISS.

Pete.
 
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