OpenStreetMap aeronautical maps

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All the data on this map is derived from online sources. Most of it is not official data, and it should not be relied on as a source of pre-flight planning or navigation.

Data

The majority of the data comes from www.openstreetmap.org which consists of user contributed GPS tracks and geographical information plus software to convert these into maps.

Airspace data comes from the xcsoar project. It is not official, and may be out of date or incorrect in places. It also doesn't distinguish between danger areas and parachute drop zones.

Airfield locations come from a variety of freely copyable sources, and the full list is available here. If you have gps locations for other airfields which are not listed let me know.

Terrain information is from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, provided free by NASA.

Notams are downloaded from the preflight information bulletins here. they should be updated 4 times a day, and the validity is displayed at the top of the map page.

Software

Map tiles are rendered with mapnik, following these instructions. The custom config file to describe how to draw maps which look like the 1/4 mil CAA charts is osm-template.xml.

In addition to the standard osm data this template file uses a shapefile of airfields, a shapefile of airspace, and a shapefile of ATZs. The shapefiles of airspace and ATZs are created from uk.air by create_airspace_shapefile.rb, and for the airfields from airports.txt by create_airfields.rb.

Finally the contour information comes from NASAs freely available SRTM dataset. The srtm_read program reads individual tiles created by mapnik, and adds the appropriate colouring based on terrain height.