Cool visualization! One thing that isn't mentioned is the difference between true and magnetic compass directions. The runway illustration shows a runway 05 with a heading of 50°. The illustration makes it look like these are true degrees, since 0° is at the top as it would be in a typical map aligned with true north.<p>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.
Very cool, might use it in my aero eng lectures! Regarding this topic, in 2011 I did a quick Mathematica script to calculate the historical wind rose for any given airport and display it together with the airport map: <a href="https://wechoosethemoon.es/2011/11/08/mathematica-rosa-de-los-vientos/" rel="nofollow">https://wechoosethemoon.es/2011/11/08/mathematica-rosa-de-lo...</a> Sorry, it's in Spanish, the notebook itself is available here: <a href="http://wechoosethemoon.es/assets/files/RosaVientos.nb" rel="nofollow">http://wechoosethemoon.es/assets/files/RosaVientos.nb</a>
Link is broken from the parent figures.cc site too.<p>EDIT: Google DNS 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4 doesn't resolve, but Cloudflare DNS servers do. Interesting.
One thing that sticks out is how many airports the US and Canada have and how few China has.<p>Does anyone know if the data is incomplete for China, or is this accurate?
Is there a way to search airport codes? Would be interesting to pull up a specific airport with relevant runway analysis.<p>I think AeroData does this also.
Not only does the domain not resolve for me (Google DNS), but looking up the IP and connecting directly gives me an nginx 404. (<a href="http://217.160.0.68" rel="nofollow">http://217.160.0.68</a>).<p>In case the creator is here... a large part of the internet can't access it right now.
it'd be fun to drop this vector field on a graph (maybe a sphere's surface), interpolate between points, and then drop in particles and watch their streamlines.
[Edit: I am wrong. Ignore this]<p>>"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."<p>NO!!<p>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".<p>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.