RunwayFinder mapping broken?

[davidtg]

Hi, all --

Since RF has come back online (yay! :-) I haven't seen any successful request maps. For instance, going to

http://www.pilotsnpaws.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11582
http://www.pilotsnpaws.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11593

and clicking the RF map option just gives me an

Error: Duplicate locations in route.

bar at the bottom. My guess is that the interface has changed. Thoughts?


TIA & HTH & HAND

[Steve Foley]

This has to do with the way runwayfinder resolves locations. There is no way to definitively tell runwayfinder that the location being passed is a zipcode. When I originally write the interface, I used the tag "zip=xxxxx", however this failed on many zipcodes, including the zipcode to my home airport (01602). ZIP=01602 resolves to 1602 Zip Ln, Madrid, IA 50156, USA.

I changed the tag to zipcode to get around this, and it worked well for a while. Unfortunately, runwayfinder is now resolving zipcode to Zipade, Cordesville, SC 29461, USA. So runwayfinder now thinks every flight originates and terminates in Zipade, Cordsville, SC , hence the duplicate message.

If I can get a definitive specification on specifying locations on runwayfinder, I'll probably re-tool the interface to use it. Unless that happens, I simply can't keep re-writing the interface based on guesses.

[davidtg]

Steve, et al --

...
If I can get a definitive specification on specifying locations on runwayfinder, I'll probably re-tool the interface to use it. Unless that happens, I simply can't keep re-writing the interface based on guesses.

Gotcha. That makes sense to me, and I certainly wouldn't keep stabbing in the dark, either. We'll see what develops.


Thanks again & HAND

[jlspence]

If you have not already done so, perhaps you can contact Dave Parsons at dave@runwayfinder.com to find out how to get this to work properly. I can make Skyvector work for PnP flight planning but always preferred RunwayFinder when it was operating. It'd be nice to get it working again.

[Steve Foley]

I corresponded with Dave Parsons when I originally wrote the interface. He said he simply used a google function to lookup the location. He was not aware of the 'zipcode=' tag.

I've found clicking on the link and editing the url to remove the zipcode= tags sometimes works. the url would have "zipcode=01602;zipcode=55532' change to '01602;55532'. Sometimes it works, sometimes you get strange results.

[jlspence]

It looks like if you modify your interface to remove the "zipcode=" and just use the originating and destination zipcodes with a semicolon between them, with no spaces, it works just fine.

[Steve Foley]

The first attempt at an interface did exactly that xxxxx;yyyyy. Unfortunately that didn't work consistently. Some locations came up completely wrong, which is why V2 used "ZIP=XXXXX;ZIP=YYYYY". That one had problems too, and V3 used "ZIPCODE=XXXXX;ZIPCODE=YYYYY". For some reason, ZIPCODE now translates to Zipade, Cordesville, SC 29461, USA. (More helpful spell correction?).

Hopefully next month I'll have some time to work on it.

[Steve Foley]

I made a change to use latitude and longitude on the runwayfinder link. This should work until they break it again.

[jlspence]

Awesome Steve. Thanks!