Yahoo! Open Hack Day India Returns

Yahoo! India R&D is organizing it’s second Open Hack Day in Bangalore this weekend (14-15 February, 2009. Yes, it’s Valentine’s Day, and it also coincides with Aero India, Asia’s premier air show). The event is a semi-unconference comprising of structured technology presentations and unstructured hacking time, where participants try to come up with new and interesting ways to use Yahoo!’s APIs and libraries.

Yahoo! co-founder David Filo will be kicking-off the event. The hackday website contains useful info and links to the hackday blog.

AirToAirCombat.com

AirtToAirCombat.com is an exhaustive military aviation, fighter jet, and warbird resource.

Aircraft Cockpits

Like instruments, switches, guages and controls? This one’s for you.

SpaceWar.com

SpaceWar.com is an informative resource for Military Space News, Nuclear Weapons and Missile Defense.

Day 128 – Airbus A380 at Montreal Airport

_Captain’s Log, StarDate 2007.11.12-01.15_

The gigantic A380 (flight AIB 380) landed at Montreal airport today, and even though the runway is visible from my office, I miscalculated the ETA by a few minutes (I’m told that it landed sooner than expected). Nevermind, here are some photos. I’m sure some of them have been taken by people from office. I’ve also been listening in to the LiveATC feed all afternoon, and most pilots coming in have been asking the controller if the A380 is still there

While watching the video coverage later, I saw that traffic on the major roads around the airport came to a standstill as people came out of their cars to witness the spectacle. I had actually seen the news helicopter that had taken the footage hovering over the airport for quite some time. Interesting.

Open Domain Flight Simulators

FlightGear is a completely open-source and multi-platform flight simulator.

X-Plane by Laminar Research is an open, customizable and multi-platform flight simulator. Also check out the X-Plane community.

Virtual Air Traffic Simulation Network

VATSIM – Virtual Air Traffic Simulation Network – is a unique website aimed at pilot and air traffic controller training.

Live ATC Audio Streams!

LiveATC.net features live streaming audio of many North American airports. They even have a Top 30 list!

Flight Tracking

Here are some websites for flight tracking:

• FlightStats.com – Flight status, delays and airport information
• FlightAware.com – Live flight tracking
• StarAlliance Screensaver – Real or accelerated time plotting of 17 major international plus more regional carriers
• SpottersRadar.com – Real-time virtual aviation radar
• KuwaitStorm.com – Kuwait’s weather and aviation site

Brevity Code

Brevity codes are used by the military (mostly Air Force personnel), to convey convex information in a few words. Here’s a list of American/NATO Multiservice Tactical Brevity Codes. As far as I know, the codes for alphabets that the Indian defence services use are (corrections/additional info welcome):

Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot Gamma Hotel India

Joker Kilo Lima Mike November Oscar Papa Quebec Romeo

Sera Tango Uniform Victor Whiskey X-ray Yankee Zulu

If you notice carefully, these codes are designed in a way that when somebody is saying them over a noisy radio connection, no two alphabets can be confused with each other. Each of them has a unique sound and has as few syllables as possible (and no silent letters).

Further, all over the world, to reduce confusion between one and nine, the latter is commonly substituted by niner.

Zulu also refers to GMT time.

Also see STANAG (Standardization Agreement) and the NATO STANAG Library (English).