Flying

Tracking Flight MH17 in Google Earth

July 23, 2014

Last week, Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine by a surface-to-air missile, killing all 298 people on board. While blame is still being passed around for the crash, there are some places using Google Earth to try to better understand what happened.

First is the photo below, found via Twitter, which is using Google Earth to show the path of the flight, the path of the missile, and the crash site. At this point I’ve not been able to find a KML file for this image, but the image itself is rather striking:

Next is a series of images of the crash site, provided by DigitalGlobe. As they often do after a major news event, DigitalGlobe was able to capture imagery of the crash site to help document it from the air. They were unable to capture imagery on July 17 due to cloud cover, but have some from a few days around it.

They’ve also released two KML files to show some of the imagery:

That info comes to us from Amy Svitak at Aviation Week, who has a full article with more photos that is worth checking out.

Fun geography challenges with Google Earth

June 6, 2014

Alan Parkinson has pointed us to a fun resource from the folks at Geography All The Way — a challenge that takes you back to 1937 as a pilot for Imperial Airlines.

The year is 1937 and you work for Imperial Airways. The company has just taken delivery of a small fleet of Short Empire Flying Boats, with a range of 1200 km and an average speed of 300 km/h.

Your job is to design a route so that Imperial Airways can use their Short Empire Flying Boats to fly paying customers from Southampton, United Kingdom to Cape Town, South Africa.

You need to decide as a class the maximum safe distance for a flight leg, the time taken to refuel the flying boats and the earliest and latest the planes can fly. In 1937 planes did have radar so would not fly at night!

Use Google Earth, with it’s measurement tool, to design your route. Each stop needs to be at a settlement with a significant population. Your route should be submitted as a single Google Earth file with the placemarks in the correct order.

You should produce a route card that includes the start and end point of each leg of the journey, the distance, the duration and the take off and landing times.

The post provides additional tips on using tools such as the Google Earth Ruler and Google Spreadsheets to help facilitate your work. All in all, it’d be a fun challenge for a geography student to tackle!

(via +Alan Parkinson and Google Earth Users Guide)

Airport runways are beautiful in Google Earth

May 27, 2014

A while back we looked at some of the scariest airports in the Caribbean, but Lauren O’Neil has taken it further by finding some of the best-looking airports in the world in Google Earth.

You can find all of Lauren’s work at holding-pattern.tumblr.com. While her images are quite stunning, the logic behind airport runways can be even better.

Joseph Flaherty at Wired recent wrote a great article that explores the details of how runways are structured in terms of colors, symbols and fonts. A great example is in his “runway math” section:

Airport runways aren’t numbered based on priority, but compass bearings. A runway that is 194° away from magnetic north would be simplified to 190° to prevent rounding errors, and the last digit is dropped, leaving it at 19. Fun fact: Most runways are able to be used in both directions, and when approached from the opposite side the runway’s number is achieved by subtracting 18 or 180°.

I encourage you to read his entire article to learn more, then check out Lauren’s blog to see many other examples around the world.

Police working on a “live Google Earth” to monitor small areas

April 21, 2014

While it will be a long time before we see a live version of Google Earth, as Frank recently explained, there are some places where small scale real-time imagery is starting to come out.

The most recent example is in Compton, California, where they can monitor a 25 square mile area for six hours at a time thanks to a company called Persistent Surveillance Systems(PSS).

PSS attaches high-resolution cameras to aircraft that fly around and stream the imagery back to the ground. You can learn quite a bit more about it in this video or by reading this blog post on Gizmodo.

Using the Google Earth Flight Simulator

April 18, 2014

The Google Earth Flight Simulator is one of those features that many people overlook. Here are some tips to make the most of it.

With the the release of Google Earth 4.2 back in 2007, Google added a much-requested feature to the product; a flight simulator. To try it out for yourself, simply go to [Tools] –> [Enter Flight Simulator] and dive in!

Not long after it came out, Frank posted a list of tips and tricks for using the simulator, as it can be a bit tricky to get started.

Start up the flight simulator as described above. I recommend you choose the SR-22 plane to start (it is a much slower plane than the F-16, and will help you learn the controls). Choose any airport, or just the default “Katmandu”. If you don’t have a joystick, you can’t select one. Next hit Start flight.
You will see the HUD (Head Up Display) in green (click here for a guide to the HUD indicators). Make your window dimension roughly square (otherwise you may not see all of the HUD display elements).
To get started, hold down the Page Up key briefly (this will add power to your plane). The throttle indicator is on the lower left (triangle should be at the top for full throttle).
To control your direction on the ground, use the comma and period keys on your keyboard to apply left and right brakes. Just touch them briefly to change direction left and right.
Important tip – mouse control – it’s best to use the mouse to control the plane (unless you have a joy stick). I wouldn’t bother with trying to fly with the keyboard. Simply click the mouse once in the center of the view and you should see your cursor change to a “+” sign. Don’t move your cursor outside the window or you will lose control! The mouse will only control your plane in the air, and if the cursor is inside the Google Earth window.
Taking off – Once your plane is going faster down the runway, try moving the mouse back slightly from center. If you’re going fast enough you should take off. Remember: just make small motions with the mouse close to the center of the screen. Once you have the wings level, put the mouse in the center. A lot of first time fliers have a tendency to over correct.
To make a turn – move the mouse slightly to the right or left and when your plane is tilted, pull back slightly. When you’ve made the turn you want, push the mouse back to the center then the other direction to tilt the plane back to level.
Pausing – If you want to stop for a moment, simply hit the space key on the keyboard and it will pause the simulator. Hit space again to resume.
Start higher – Position your view in Google Earth in the normal mode so you are at least 30,000 feet above ground. Tilt your view so you are looking at the horizon. Then restart the flight simulator mode (use Tools->Enter Flight Simulator…, or the keyboard shortcut CTRL-ALT-A) so you can choose what plane to use, and other options. Choose Select your start position->Current view in the window, and then choose Start flight. You should add power by hitting the Page Up key after starting it up. Now you can practice flying a while before you hit the ground!
Landing – it is possible to land the plane. But, I’ll leave that for advanced tutorials.

Your other great option for flight in Google Earth is Xavier Tassin’s amazing GE Flight Simulator site, powered by the Google Earth Plugin. It’s quite an amazing site with dozens of aircraft to choose from (including paragliders and hot air balloons), real-time weather, and live multi-player (see other users flying around near you).

It also has a creative multimonitor mode, for those of you with more than one screen that are looking for a more immersive experience. You can try it yourself right now at gefs-online.com.