Hi OSM contributors, As a pilot and a contributor to FOSS, I want to contribute available speedflying lines to OSM for the good of the pilots and everyone who potentially intersects with them on the ground (skiers, property owners, forest rangers, etc.). Following the aviation recommendations [2], I first want to first discuss this idea with the OSM community.
Speedflying is a type of paragliding which is mostly about proximity flying (very low over the ground) or even speedriding (simultaneous skiing and flying). In order to share information between each other, pilots are plotting speedflying lines over maps (see [1] for an aggregation of lines which the authors agree on importing to OSM). The Aviation recommendations in OSM [2] mostly ban airspace information in OSM and I agree with this premise — since aviation information is mostly independent from Earth mapping and use. Nevertheless, unlike aviation, speedflying is a sport of flying short downward lines, staying zero to tens of meters/feet above ground, which makes the whole sport primarily dictated by the relief and what sticks out of it (incl. buildings, ski slopes, cable cars, electricity lines, etc). This makes speedflying lines very different from any aviation routes, and rather resemble climbing routes in OSM [3]. Next, I want to argument my opinion that speedflying lines belong to OSM by commenting on all the rational points in the Aviation wiki page [2]: 1) speedflying lines often coincide with existing features, like a river, ridge, valley. speedflying routes are mainly determined by the relief 2) speedflying lines are not orthogonal to on-the-ground mapping -- very dependent on hazards like the relief and mapped OSM features such as cable cars, electricity lines, ski-pists (mostly forbidden to speedride or land on them), forests, protected areas (often forbidden to fly over), and also reusing takeoffs and landings appearing on OSM [4]; speedflying lines are mostly independent of other aviation 3) speedflying lines are always observable from the ground and it can be improved by mappers 4) speedflying routes are generally not governed by authorities and the available maps are spread among private self-made google maps (owned by speedflyers all of whom I asked, were very passionate about importing to OSM since they stop maintaining them) 5) speedflying lines are generally short and in the mountains so they rarely intersect something when plotted on 2D (mostly with a ski-pist or a cable car) 6) speedflying lines are of significance for skiers who may share or neighbor takeoffs, landings or offpist ski-riding, as well as of interest of property owners of nearby huts, restaurants, rangers, etc. 7) speedflying is fastly growing in popularity, there are schools on speedflying specifically, and access to information is needed for the safety of the pilots and the surroundings 8) speedflying information is unavailable in any free (free as in FOSS) database, and for countries away from the Alps it is hard to find even private maps 9) speedflying lines are easily plotted in 2D since most of the flying is close to ground (altitude depending mostly on the glide and the level of experience); 3D does not add much information 10) speedflying lines do not intersect with regulated airspaces, do not depend on air traffic, runways or other aviation (other than sharing takeoffs and landings with paragliders) so they won't flood the existing OSM maps 11) the weather is a random factor that may make a line not flyable, or may require higher caution, etc. but it can hardly change the possible routes 12) the low glide and the high sink-rate limits speedflying to roughly the planned route; unlike paragliding, improvising with takeoffs and landings is almost impossible (experts may say that they "found a line" which is a very precious knowledge) 13) speedflying information is not published officially so the main information contributors are sole pilots who are willing to contribute their knowledge to the community (e.g. the author of [1]) I hope to have convinced you that despite of technically flying, speedflying is a dictated by the Earth makes it a natural match with OSM. I will be glad to receive your feedback. [1] speedflyingmap.ch [2] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Aviation [3] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Climbing [4] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:sport%3Dfree_flying Best, Pesho Ivanov, PhD Pennsylvania State University _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
