flight.stl

As I was doing flights to complete my Private Pilots license I downloaded the positional data of every flight to analyze them all at a later date. Each entry contains position (latitude, longitude, altitude) but also other information like heading and climb rate. All my training was done in Cessna 172s, I completed my license in the winter of 2020.

I wanted a way to memorialize my most memorable flights (like my night XC into KIND, pictured) and figured that using my 3D printer was the best way to complete this. The primary concept was to plot the flight track as a 3D spine, expand it into a solid tube then extrude it down to the 'ground' plane. It was important that the model could be scaled down to fit my printer while visualizing the change in altitude.

The data was obtained from FlightAware, a service that collects and shares the aircraft data (ADS-B). They display it as a table on their website but it can easily be copied into a csv file. This is then read into Blender's Python scripting interface. I then apply a variety of transforms on the data to scale it down and give it volume. The final step is to reduce the polygon count and export it as a .stl filetype.