Sixth Freedom

The other day I saw a web site where you could see the position of the Sun during a flight.

There was a map of the world and you entered your flight details. You could then 'pull' your flight along and it showed the areas of earth in day and night during the flight, as well as the longitude in noon.

Now I want to see it again and despite vigorous Google searching I cannot find it!

Has anybody else seen this?

Many thanks in advance.

BA6501

www.sunflight.net

Sixth Freedom

That is the one - thank you very much!

dubbin

My thread! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...-uberhack.html

BA6501

Welcome! And thanks dubbin for initially posting it.

sunflight

Hi everyone

Thanks for discovering my website, sunflight.net. I'm really delighted to read positive feedback about it.

If you have any feature requests or feedback about how it could be improved then please send me an email to ian(at)getflight(dot)com(dot)au. (hope that doesn't break forum rules for providing email..)

Thanks again and I look forward to feedback!

Cheers,
Ian
twitter.com/aussie_ian

Jenzo

It's a good website and thank you! However I want to report that if on a flight that has a stopover for fuel (ba0012) it only shows it up to the Singapore leg not the Sydney. Otherwise brilliant! Thanks and I hope this helps.

J

dubbin

Ian, I love it - such a simple idea and beautifully implemented. Having the sun in one's eyes can adversely affect an otherwise enjoyable flight, and I can never remember / work out where the sun will be.

I hope you can make it self-sustaining or even turn a profit

Sixth Freedom

Welcome to FT sunflight. ^

You have a great website that I am sure will become as epic as the Great Circle Mapper.

My feedback is that like Jenzo I found difficulty with sixth freedom sectors.

For example, entering BA124 (DOH-BAH-LHR) only shows the DOH-BAH leg. BA125 (LHR-BAH-DOH) on the other hand, you see the LHR-BAH leg.

sunflight

Hi everyone

I've just released an update to SunFlight.net, here's a list of new features:

- Multi-leg support (try UA154 for example)
- Calculates the % of time on left, right, and night for each flight
- Calculates the time and side of sunset and sunrise
- New, improved user interface
- Mobile support for iPhone / iPad / Android
- Support for IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.

Thanks to everyone for their feedback, please keep it coming so I can keep improving this tool. Also if you like using SunFlight please consider donating (using the link at the bottom of the website) so I can pay towards the commercial data costs.

Cheers,
Ian

Sixth Freedom

A very interesting set of enhancements, thanks sunflight. ^

I was interested to see that on my BA15 to SIN on 1-Aug the flight will be almost exactly divided into three by nighttime, sun-on-right and sun-on-left.

Shuttle-Bored

What a great idea - love it.

Sigwx

@sunflight

Great app! Does it compensate for altitude? A Middle Eastern version improvement could include Imsak and Iftar timings for Ramadan? Very simple and handy site, I like it.

For those bored of AVOD etc who wish to exercise their grey matter, a CX Captain came up with the following (que requests for graph paper) http://www.andytracy.net/sunrise.htm

sunflight

Hi Sigwx, thanks for the feedback.

That's a good question in regards to the sunset. According to my research, sunset/sunrise is when the Sun is less than 12 degrees in the sky. The library Sunflight uses (PySolar) to calculate the sun altitude based on sea level, so I use 6 degrees to factor in the altitude (a guess) of the flight. Night time is determined when the Sun is less than 0 degrees.

I'll check into whether PySolar can give me a sun altitude calculation based on a height above sea level. However there will still be some guesswork in this as my flight routing data (from OAG) does not tell me the cruising altitude of the flight. I could fix this at 36,000ft and perhaps 40,000ft for longer flights.

If you're interested, here's some examples in PySolar: https://github.com/pingswept/pysolar/wiki/examples

I'd really like to get the calculation even more precise, so if you have any ideas let me know.

I've got no idea about Ramadan timings but if someone wants to request the feature and can tell me how to implement it, then I'll add it as a feature people can toggle in the "Advanced" tab.

Cheers,
Ian

sunflight

Hey everyone

Just released an update to www.sunflight.net

Mobile updates:
- Improved calendar for mobile (uses native date input for iPhone, Android)
- Improved layout for mobile (moved the slider underneath the map, so you can animate the map without moving your hand over the map)

(Moderator - is there anywhere this thread could be moved that is more appropriate for posting updates/feedback? I have this thread posted in my FAQ to encourage users to post feedback to)

Cheers,
Ian - SunFlight.net