Aircraft Database Updaters Team

[AirNav Development]

6 months after the Database Updaters group was formed we would like to congratulate them for the wonderful job done. We have received many important feedback from many users regarding their work and it is AirNav Systems intention to help them improving it.

From the stats on the "AirNav Database Updater" application we have now 78152 aircraft records from which over 80% (63000 records) were updated by the team.
The "Database Update Requests" thread has now 1097 posts and has been viewed over 21 thousand times.

AirNav RadarBox aircraft database is now, thanks to effort of all, more accurate and complete.

Suggestions are always welcome and work will continue to bring an even better product to the RadarBox community.

[Chris11]

Agreed - well done guys - now we just need a route updater team

[Marpleman]

6 months after the Database Updaters group was formed we would like to congratulate them for the wonderful job done. We have received many important feedback from many users regarding their work and it is AirNav Systems intention to help them improving it.

From the stats on the "AirNav Database Updater" application we have now 78152 aircraft records from which over 80% (63000 records) were updated by the team.
The "Database Update Requests" thread has now 1097 posts and has been viewed over 21 thousand times.

AirNav RadarBox aircraft database is now, thanks to effort of all, more accurate and complete.

Suggestions are always welcome and work will continue to bring an even better product to the RadarBox community.

This is all well and good - but until the end user gets the full benefit of what we have done, we haven't achieved anything worth shouting about.

What would be more useful, is a resume of where we stand with actually getting to a situation of either fixing the issues that are preventing this, or alternative methods of getting this info to the end user.

Hopefully this can be moved forward soon?

Thanks to all those who have posted info on the update thread, especially Chris and Andrew

Rich

Edit - it's also worth mentioning for the record, that the above % updated, does not reflect that 80% of the total db was incorrect, as some people will no doubt conclude, but incorporates exiting data that the team have checked as being correct,and additional new data not already there.

[bratters]

This is all well and good - but until the end user gets the full benefit of what we have done, we haven't achieved anything worth shouting about.

What would be more useful, is a resume of where we stand with actually getting to a situation of either fixing the issues that are preventing this, or alternative methods of getting this info to the end user.

Rich

Rich - my thanks to you et al for all you have done (and continue to do) but moreso thanks for thinking of the rest of us - the majority - who are decidedly on the outside looking in.

Speaking as your specimen "end-user", rightly or wrongly I do not feel that I am any further forward, in fact my database seems less accurate now than it was when I purchased my box two years ago - is this actually so?

I have made some efforts to contribute accurate information on the "routing" front  however as this doesn't get back to me and the same old errors continue to populate my screen, I am fast losing interest. It is totally frustrating - everybody and his dog seems to know the right routes, but my screen still has it wrong.

There seems little point in my continuing with the work if it's not going to benefit me as well as everyone else - in fact there seems little point bothering with the box at all which is why I now use it less and less.

Sad, but there it is.

[Marpleman]

Yep - imagine my frustrations, when actually adding or amending stuff on the central database, but not even getting it on my box, without manually going into my own Navdata file and changing it there!

Just trying to give a balanced view.

The team are acting independantly from AirNav in the task, so our frustrations are no less than all the other users at the end of the day!

Rich

[orkney]

Hello

I have managed to get my database to automatically populate just by changing the name of the photos folder in the radarbox directory. this forces the software to look for new photos and information. Not perfect I know but at least it works.

Andrew

[Marpleman]

Morning Andrew

Yes, I realise this works, but just think it's a messy process especially when your screens full of aircraft and there are a couple of entries in Myflights with missing detail, when we know the data is in the database.

Several members have posted saying that they are not comfortable with the idea of messing with their database files either not knowing correctly how to do it, or plainly that they really shouldn't have to be doing it!

I suppose for the time being at least, it's better than nothing!

Rgds

Rich

[orkney]

Hello

I think you might be missing the point since this is nothing to do with database files. You just need to rename the folder named below to something like "old photos" and radarbox will automatically create a new "photo" folder and start downloading new ones (obviously only do this if you are always connected to the internet and I cannot be held responsible for any undesired consequences.)

Deleting the photo folder does the same but I like to keep the old ones for reference and backups.

(where radarbox is installed)\AirNav Systems\AirNav RadarBox\Data\Photo


Andrew

[Marpleman]

Hello

I think you might be missing the point since this is nothing to do with database files. You just need to rename the folder named below to something like "old photos" and radarbox will automatically create a new "photo" folder and start downloading new ones (obviously only do this if you are always connected to the internet and I cannot be held responsible for any undesired consequences.)

Deleting the photo folder does the same but I like to keep the old ones for reference and backups.

(where radarbox is installed)\AirNav Systems\AirNav RadarBox\Data\Photo


Andrew

Andrew

Far from it - I'm not missing the point at all!

The fact that"we" have to make comments about how to facilitate any update process, means that the whole process is not working to achieve the desired expected result.

If your going to make quotes about not being held responsible, surely that's indicative of how un-robust the whole thing is?

Rich

[tarbat]

I have managed to get my database to automatically populate just by changing the name of the photos folder in the radarbox directory. this forces the software to look for new photos and information. Not perfect I know but at least it works.

Surely if you do this you'll get a lot of invalid entries in the AT field, such as "..." etc.  Or has this now been fixed?  Is there now some sort of validation of the AT field to ensure it's a valid ICAO code?

[orkney]

Hello

It is probably a bad idea then since you both think it will cause a number of problems. At least it seems to work for me but that must just be exceptional luck.

Andrew

[Chris11]

The Updaters should  not feel that despondent. ;) The work being done si getting out there even though it is a manual process.

I sort my aircraft by company and then, where there are obvious errors I go and delete the photos for that particular aircraft which forces an undate.

I have found that there are few errors in the AT field. There are some that ere exceptions eg E-6, C25? etc but they are in the minority.

The valid point is that there should not have to be manual intervention ans I assume a date stamp is the only possible solution.

[AirNav Support]

Work is underway to rectify the issues mentioned in the thread such as the auto updating of the database (both routes and aircraft) so data is updated in a better way which allows over-ridding by the customer. We apologise for the inconvenience caused and we are doing our best to get this rectified and then will roll this out to customers.

We are doing our best to get this done asp however there are some technical and resource challenges in the way. However we hope to soon put this issue to bed.

Regarding some of the quick fixes, if you delete your photos folder the database will get updated on all aircraft you receive however this will not rectify the "..." issue.