Building an Aviation Web App (Part 1)
Have you ever wished to have a (free) web-based calculator/companion to flight planning or performance calcualations?
I’ve been working on my CFI rating for a little while now, and in the process of constructing lesson plans it has occured to me that it might be instructive to create some kind of a web app and/or series of companion posts as an aid to explaining basic principles of flight/aircraft performance.
Specifically, I am envisioning creating a web-based tool that might perform a few different functions:
- Given an aircraft type and conditions, perform takeoff/landing performance calculation (likely a common training a/c such as a 172 or cherokee/archer)
- Using POH recommendations for certain special conditions, give the user the ability to select “modifiers” to performance calcuations (e.g. grass runways, sloping runways of specified grade, and different a/c loading conditions)
- Create an “easy interpolator” for POH data to get performance data at specific conditions (generic such that it could be used as 1D or 2D interpolation of any type)
- Vector visualization for true heading, true course, wind correction angle analysis as an aid to instruction
- Vector visualization for forces of flight, left turning tendencies
- Other simple calculators (pressure/density altitude, true airspeed/equivalent airspeed, top of climb/descent, crosswind component, maneuvering speed, stall speed vs bank/configuration/load factor)
Ultimately, I’m not a graphic designer, so the visualizations may be limited or require some kind of plugin situation. I will have to figure that one out… Fortunately, the actual calculation part is straightforward and I plan to share all calculations/code/other materials as I create them!
Bonus for me as this project requires learning some web development. At this point, most likely that will require a separate site (since github only allows static pages) and probably something hacked together with flask (or even a simple jupyter notebook) for starters.
Stay tuned…
Tailwinds!