I Would Like to Introduce You to the Locator

Hello Everyone,

Some of you may be know of a project I have been working on for a few years now. I call it the Locator. It is an on-line searchable database of locations around the world where aircraft are displayed. These locations may be aviation museums or simply roadside warbirds. The Locator has the advantage of being searchable politically by continent, countries and regions (provinces, states, counties, etc.). The database can also be searched graphically using latitude and longitude coordinates or a street address to find what is nearby a particular location. To make use of the search engine go to…

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

The Locator was established a few years ago and has been undergoing continual improvement. Along those lines is the latest addition to the suite of tools for the Locator just released which is called the Travel Planner. This new tool 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/LocatorTravelPlanner_TripManager.php

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

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

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

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_Credits.php#Individuals

…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 web 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 Europe…

http://www.aerialvisuals.ca/Locator_Notes.php?Continent=Europe

…for which I have not yet had a chance to look for and add to the database. If anyone can help by providing any information for these potential locations please let me know. You can do so by clicking the red + links you will find for each entry after you use the links to drill down to the individual regions.

I would also welcome anyone who can suggest a route or two to travel for visiting aviation locations. The idea would not only be to visit aviation locations but also to enjoy a scenic route and enjoy a nice restaurant or pub along the way and suggest hotels to stay at. These contributors could use the new trip planners feature and share those suggested routes by making them public. Are there any volunteers to create such trip plans? I have already created a few routes for my home province of Ontario so check out the community page (link above) to see a few examples. I have found the Trip Planner works well with locations in North America, but I am not sure how well Google Maps works with locations in Europe. I would appreciate any feedback you may have.

Other new features are being considered for the Locator suite of tools. 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 and suggestions.

Regards,

Mike