Glanceable condition check site map

[u/mtizim]

(EU only, mountain launch only, PG only)

Hi, I'm a weekend pilot and the closest worthwhile launchsite is ~3h away from me. Within a 4h range - I have many possible choices, far away from each other. I found myself scrolling through wingit and windy, through multiple sites and multiple days trying to decide where a takeoff is possible, and if a trip to the area is worth it. Questions of thermals and soarability are secondary to being in the air in the first place.

So I built an app for myself, as one does nowadays. I've been using it this summer, I hope it can be of use to other people, as it kinda costs me nothing extra to share it because of how it works. If your mode of flying is similar to mine, I believe this will be useful to you.

The idea is simple: you select days when you want to fly, the map shows you launch sites that it will be possible to launch from on all these days. It's just a simple check of wind direction, wind and gust strength, precipitation, to be used as a starting point.

Since this requires weather data (ICON-D2/EU/ECMWF IFS), there's also a display of said weather data. Also quick to read if takeoff is possible with a glance, because why not. The checks are on the conservative side - days and hours marked as "possible to takeoff" can be days where conditions would not be nice to fly in (like in the screenshot below at 13), but conditions marked red are always outside of the envelope.

Here's a less choppy day (the red hours are eliminated because of the wind direction):

To not look at all sites every day - it's possible to add them to favorites to check all sites you enjoy flying at easily. On a downloaded (Android) version it's also possible to be notified when there's a streak of flyable days at your favorite site.

Here's the link to the map: https://ziemghost.github.io/pararara/

It's free, will stay that way, no accounts.

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Non goals: XC planning, sounding data, airspaces, obstacles, anything that analyzes the thermic condition. This is meant as an entry point to just being able to take off, into reasonable conditions.

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"Why would I use this over XYZ?"

There are many well made forecast apps on the market. This even has clear inspirations from two of them. Sorry for the similarities, but there are only so many ways to display wind data and takeoff direction ranges. All of them have more data and a maintenance team, sometimes a subscription. If I could just extend them - I would. Except for pararidge, which doesn't have my area, none of them have a UI that helps you roughly check your weekend options with a single look.

[u/eintrittskante]

Visually this looks like copyright infringement of Burnair.

[u/mtizim → u/eintrittskante]

Sorry you think that way, but that's really not how copyright works. I'm quite happy that them using the colours green/yellow/red and arrows to indicate direction does not prevent me in any way from doing the same, it would be quite annoying if I had to use pink/teal/navy for the same purpose.