AirAware v0.8

Features in full

Eight layers, each switched on its own from the front page

TFR FAA Temporary Flight Restrictions, drawn as 3D volumes from the published floor to the published ceiling, red when in effect and amber when scheduled.

NOTAMs What is going on in the air right now that no chart shows: drone operations, parachute drops, towers with their lights out, cranes, closed runways. Read every three minutes from the FAA NOTAM Management Service by a takwerx relay and published as tiles; the phone never holds an FAA credential. Colored by kind, with the FAA text as issued on the details page.

Airspace Class A through G, one shelf per published step, so the upside-down wedding cake over a Class B airport is drawn as the twelve shelves the FAA publishes rather than one ring. Sectional chart colors: B and D blue, C and E magenta, with Class E taking its color from how low it comes down.

Special Use Prohibited, Restricted, Warning and Alert areas and Military Operations Areas, with whether each is continuous or activated by NOTAM.

UAS ceilings The FAA UAS Facility Map: how high a drone may fly without an authorization, as a grid colored green through red. The pinned status line says it in words for wherever the operator is standing.

UAS No-Fly The FAA's National Security UAS Flight Restrictions: the bases, stations, laboratories, dams and nuclear sites no drone may fly over at all, surface to 400 ft AGL. One pack for the whole country, drawn as red rings with the facility name; the details page carries the point of contact the FAA publishes with each one.

Obstacles The FAA Digital Obstacle File — towers, wire spans, transmission towers, turbines and stacks — standing at their published height with the height on a label.

METARs Observations as flight-category chips in the aviation convention: green VFR, blue MVFR, red IFR, magenta LIFR, as published and never derived.

Beside the layers there is a UAS flight planner: a launch point and a circle or a drawn area, terrain above the ceiling painted as islands, obstacle headroom, and the ceiling worked out two ways — given one, see what reaches it; or need one, and be told the number to ask for. It links out to where a LAANC authorization is filed and to Flight Service for a NOTAM, with the plan's own numbers filled in.

Everything downloaded survives a restart with no network. Switching a layer off hides it and never deletes it.

Equipment required

An Android device running ATAK-CIV 5.8.0, and network access for the first download of each area. After that the plugin works offline on what it holds.

Works with

No external hardware. The flight planner uses the device's own position and ATAK's elevation data; DTED2 coverage is needed for the terrain and ceiling calculations, and the plugin says so plainly where it is missing rather than computing from coarser data.

Network and security

Outbound HTTPS (TCP 443) only. AirAware opens no listening port, accepts no inbound connection, and sends nothing to a TAK Server.

tfr.faa.gov FAA Temporary Flight Restriction list and the per-restriction XNOTAM detail documents.

aviationweather.gov METAR observations, by bounding box.

mapdepot.takwerx.org Airspace, obstacle and UAS facility map tiles, published by TAKWERX from the FAA's own public data. These are read as static files; no credential is held or sent, and nothing about the device or its position is transmitted.

The plugin is a reader. It sends no telemetry, no position, and no identifying information to any host. Requests are plain GETs for public aeronautical data, and every fetch is refused unless the scheme is HTTPS.

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