Trails of Wind: Data Visualization of the Architecture of Airport Runways
trailsofwind.figures.cc
trailsofwind.figures.cc
But runways are not named by their true heading, they are named by their magnetic heading. It's generally not a huge difference, for example true and magnetic north are about 12° apart at JFK in New York. But it's something that one would want to take into account in any simulation or visualization like this.
EDIT: Google DNS 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4 doesn't resolve, but Cloudflare DNS servers do. Interesting.
Does anyone know if the data is incomplete for China, or is this accurate?
China's extensive recent work on a high speed rail network is probably relevant here, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_by_ICAO_code:... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_by_ICAO_code:...
[Edit] They're generally used for hobbyists. Although, I once watched a V-22 Osprey practicing touch-and-goes at [1] below -- kicked up all kinds of desert dust. I've never felt more like being in Half-Life than at that time.
[1] Ocotillo Wells Airport https://www.google.com/maps/@33.1469143,-116.1300329,587m/da...
[2] Salton Sea Airport https://www.google.com/maps/@33.2420755,-115.9513012,1246m/d...
Further, outside of NA and Europe, GA is simply not as commonplace and in many cases like China/Russia, it's because it's (for all intents) inaccessible. Besides being heavily regulated, it's also relatively expensive, even by first-world standards.
I think AeroData does this also.
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Whats interesting about the airport codes (the three letter designation) is that they are commonly derrived from the plot of land or field they were created on. Sometimes even the name of the land owner.
Oh here you go:
https://abcnews.go.com/Travel/history-airport-codes-logic-le...
In case the creator is here... a large part of the internet can't access it right now.
fwiw, i use adguard dns[0] which i initially learned about right here on hn (edit: and figures.cc resolves just fine with it).
>"Runways generally point in the wind direction, as aircraft take off and land more easily upwind. The designation of these is based on their respective alignment angles."
NO!!
This is exactly 180º wrong -- what generates lift on a wing is _relative_ airflow and thus pilots preferentially prefer to take off or land into a headwind -- which mimics speed "for free".
Likewise, tailwind landings are downright dangerous for the same reason, and each aircraft has strict (and low) limits for the maximum permitted tailwind. The illustration is exactly the other way around.
- It's both really large (it would take ~10 hours to drive from Pensacola to Miami) and pretty dense (8th densest state as of 2015[1])
- It has a lot of military bases: 5 active Air Force bases and 4 Naval Air Stations, along with a bunch of other installations that also have airfields.
More broadly: It has good weather most of the year, it's the closest point in the continental US to a lot of places (the Carribean, Central and South America), and it had a ton of empty land during the period that the US started building a lot of airfields.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...
The reason for that in turn likely has something to do with being extraordinarily flat, with good year round weather and close to major population centers.
Why does the Southern US seem to contain the highest concentration of North-South runways in the world?
It has to do with prevailing winds. Thanks to the Gulf of Mexico, winds in the eastern half of Texas and the surrounding states pretty consistently blow south to north.