New Features for the Locator Now On-Line

[mrhenniger]

The latest addition to the suite of tools for the Locator is now available. This feature is called the Locator Travel Planner and it allows you to plan road trips to visit the locations of the Locator. You can then make the trips public so they can be viewed by others on a community page. The trip planner tool also has the ability to produce a page that is printer friendly so you can make a hardcopy which you can take along on your trip.

I have created a few trips myself and made them public. You can find them on the community page at…

http://www.aerialvisuals.ca/LocatorTrav ... anager.php

You can find instructions on how to start and plan trips in the how-to section at…

http://www.aerialvisuals.ca/LocatorTrav ... munity.php

This new feature will be of major interest to those who like road trips and visiting aviation museums and roadside warbirds.



An improvement has been made to the Locator search engine. You can now paste latitude and longitude coordinates or a street address into the search engine and find locations near-by that location.



In other Locator news the number of locations has hit another milestone, the 4000 location mark!!!. There are now over 4000 confirmed and pending confirmation locations in the Locator in addition to the many noted closed locations and aviation themed sites. This great success is due to the many contributors with names like Walt McKinney and Andy West just to name a few. To see who is contributing you can visit the credits section at…

http://www.aerialvisuals.ca/Locator_Cre ... ndividuals

…and the Locator Forum at…

http://www.aerialvisuals.ca/LocatorLogForum.php

I have also been able to make great use of data obtained from geocaching and similar sites to make rapid additions to the database.



There is also a new way to view the rough notes for location yet to be added to the Locator. You can find them though a series of links starting at…

http://www.aerialvisuals.ca/Locator_Notes.php

…if you want to find potential locations for the Locator to help do some searching this is the place to do it. Look for the red + links to find the familiar submission forms which allow you to contribute information to the Locator.



There are a number of Locations in the United States…

http://www.aerialvisuals.ca/Locator_Not ... d%20States

…I have not yet had a chance to look for and add to the database. I will soon be starting to review the USA state-by-state starting with Alabama…

http://www.aerialvisuals.ca/Locator_Not ... ma#results

…and proceeding alphabetically. If anyone can help by providing any information for this potential location please let me know. You can do so by clicking the red + links.

I would also like to see people suggest a few routes though Alabama to visit aviation locations which visitors to the state can follow. The idea would not only be to visit aviation locations but also to enjoy a scenic route and enjoy a nice restaurant or two along the way. The trip planners could also suggest nice hotels to stay at etc. Any volunteers to create such a trip? Do not feel you are limited to Alabama. Feel free to create a trip for your home state or one that you are planning on visiting. I have already created a few for my home province of Ontario.



Other new features are being considered. One will be the ability for people like you to upload photos to Aerial Visuals of aircraft displayed at the various locations. I am also considering an aircraft history database of those same displayed aircraft. The idea would be the new feature would be interwoven with the current Locator features.



That is all of the news I have for now. I look forward to your comments.

Regards,

Mike

[mrhenniger]

I must be boring everyone here with this Locator stuff. I got more responses on the Flypast site!

Seriously though... I am not digging for compliments, but I am always looking for suggestions for improvements and contributors with new info to add to the database.

Mike

[RyanShort1]

It is interesting, to me at least. Did you see that post here recently about putting the museum locations into Google Maps?

Ryan

[mrhenniger]

It is interesting, to me at least. Did you see that post here recently about putting the museum locations into Google Maps?

Ryan

I don't think I did. What should I search for?

Mike

[RyanShort1]

http://warbirdinformationexchange.org/p ... p?p=230463

Ryan

[mrhenniger]

Thanks for the link Ryan.

Mike

[tulsaboy]

Mike, I like the idea of putting photos of roadside aircraft in the locator. Would give people an idea of what they're going to see, or might help them find what they're looking for (especially when you can see landmarks behind the aircraft.) It's also just fun as it would help s/n geeks track down those elusive photos of that aircraft they just haven't been able to go see yet.

kevin

[Michel Lemieux]

Mike.....what you did does wonders for folks on the road like me......

Tks a gazillions