After Hours – Aviating the Internet

What is the Internet?

To give it its most simple definition, the Internet comprises hundreds of thousands of computers (known as servers or nodes) spread all around the world. These computers are connected by high speed communications lines, really not a lot different to normal telephone communications lines. Each server has a unique address which identifies it to all other servers around the world. Information is maintained on these servers and passed between them via the communications lines. Typically, individual users (like you and me) connect to a server on an “as needs” basis to send and collect information. Each individual also has a unique identifier or address which he/she uses when connecting to a server. For example, my address is [email protected]. Passwords are also used in the same way as PINs for bank automatic tellers to safeguard information. A range of facilities are available to Internet users. The three most commonly used of these are: (a) e-mail (or electronic mail); (b) newsgroups; (c) World Wide Web (WWW). Getting connected to Internet is easy and is getting cheaper all the time as more suppliers come onto the market. You’ll need a personal computer (PC) to start off with. Connections are available for both IBM compatible and Macintosh users. Typically your PC doesn’t have to be all that powerful, so you don’t have to rush out and buy a new computer just for the net. You’ll also need a modem. This is a device which converts the digital signals from your computer to tones to be passed through your telephone socket to the outside world and vice versa. A modem at the other end converts the tones back to digital signals. Modems are measured by the speed with which they send and receive data. Realistically, 9600bps (bits per second) is the lowest speed you should consider. Not surprisingly, the faster the modem, the bigger the price tag. A modem will be your major capital expenditure (assuming you’ve already got the computer) – around $250 is the starting point. Having a modem of the correct type and speed will open the gate to a range of other facilities, including sending and receiving faxes. You will also be able to connect to a number of existing and planned services being provided by AirServices Australia. Finally, you’ll need to identify an Internet Service Provider (ISP), the supplier with the server to which you will be connecting. Make sure you find an ISP in your local area – that way telephone calls to connect to your ISP will only be the standard 25 cents. As well as your telephone call, you’ll need to pay your ISP to be connected to his/her server. Some ISPs charge a fixed rate per month which entitles you to a set number of hours connect time. Extra time is charged at an hourly rate. Other ISPs only charge for actual connect time. There are other deals available which only allow you to connect after hours (eg from 6:00pm to 8:00am Monday to Friday and all weekend). Like most things, the secret is to shop around until you find the best deal. Your ISP should be able to provide the necessary computer software as well. An excellent range of products is now available, many of which run under Windows and are very easy to use. Australian Aviation December 1995

Electronic Mail

Having sorted out your connection and obtained your Internet address you’re cleared for takeoff on the net. Electronic mail is the most straightforward of the three operations outlined above and it’s exactly what it sounds like. It allows you to send letters and messages to anyone else around the world with an Internet address. Latest estimates have 500,000 internet users in Australia and 25 million worldwide. When I logged onto my internet account one day recently I had messages from Brazil, South Africa, USA, UK, New Zealand and Australia waiting for me. The beauty of e-mail is that it’s easy. Unfortunately, you can’t get away from having to type your message. However, you don’t have to print it. You don’t have to write out an envelope and you don’t have to go to the post office and buy a stamp. Finally, you don’t have to wait a week for it to get there, usually only a few seconds. You may have noticed that some newspapers recently started accepting letters to the editor via Internet. Many of them have now stopped doing this or at least publicly advertising their Internet addresses. This was presumably because it was just too easy for people to send letters and the newspapers were being flooded with submissions.

Newsgroups

If you’ve got this far in the article, terrific. This is where we start to talk about the aviation related stuff. Newsgroups are a mechanism allowing people with common interests to share information on “the net”. At last count there were over 3000 of them covering an enormous range of topics. Newsgroups are like newspapers, magazines, reference books and noticeboards all rolled into one. Internet users type articles and comments and “post” these to selected newsgroups. Other Internet users who look at the newsgroup then read these articles and have the opportunity to reply to them. They may also reply directly to the original postee via e-mail rather than through the newsgroup. Let me give an example. When I was asked to write this article, I posted a request in a newsgroup specialising in aviation in Australia, asking advice from people on available aviation resources on the net. I had a number of e-mail replies pointing me to resources with which I was unfamiliar. One of the things about “the net” is that, generally speaking, people will help you out whenever they can. There are a large number of newsgroups devoted to aviation. Table 1 outlines these. I regularly look at three newsgroups in particular, aus.aviation, misc.transport.air-industry and sci.aeronautics.airliners as these cover my main areas of interest in aviation. Newsgroup aus.aviation is widely used and covers many topics of aviation interest in Australia. Recent postings have included the preliminary BASI reports for a number of incidents in Australia, including the nose wheel failure on the Ansett 747 in Sydney and the recent loss of separation between a Qantas 737 and a British Airways 747 north of Broken Hill. These have been posted with the permission of the appropriate authority. The 1995 Avalon Airshow also caused a high level of discussion amongst participants, including details of the planned flying displays, comparisons to previous airshows at Avalon and Richmond and comments on the show in general. It’s not just aviation enthusiasts who contribute to aus.aviation. There has been considerable discussion recently on the noise problems associated with the closure of the east-west runway in Sydney. This discussion was initiated by a local resident who suffers from the noise. Many people from “our side of the fence” attempted to set him straight with respect to the safety of Simops, pilot discretion on operating runways and the political nature of the decision to close the runway. A copy of the March ’95 Australian Aviation editorial was also posted as part of the discussion, a lot of discussion is on US related subjects. The heavy contribution to newsgroups particularly from “stateside” can be a problem, with the sheer volume (and often poor quality) of information being difficult to take in. There are a couple of solutions to this. Firstly, some newsgroups are moderated. This means that all postings are reviewed prior to them being made available to other users. The reviewers check that postings conform to the charter of the newsgroup. The second solution is via the software you use on your PC to read and post newsgroup articles. When you “log on” to check the newsgroups to which you regularly subscribe you can just download the headers (or subjects) for all new articles which have been posted. You then “log out” and review the headers, thus avoiding unnecessary online charges to your ISP. Headers which are of interest can be marked and the body of the article will then be downloaded when you next connect to “the net”. In short, the variety of newsgroups available provides an excellent opportunity for you to look at and participate in discussions in your areas of aviation interest. Regular readers of Bob Bell’s On the Airbands column aren’t left out either – there are a number of newsgroups devoted to amateur radio, short wave listening and scanners in general. And when you’re finished with aviation and radio there’s always cooking and trains and sport and photography and dogs and horses and cats and ……

World Wide Web

The third major function of Internet is the World Wide Web. This is the component which seems to attract the most publicity and is also the one which is growing at the greatest rate. The web comprises a series of home and related pages which reside on servers all around the world. A page is literally that – a collection of text and images which is stored on a server in a format known as HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). Portions of the text in a page appear in a different colour – these items are known as “hot text”. Clicking on these items with your computer mouse will allow you to navigate around the pages to see more detail, or will link you to other related pages on servers around the world. It is a strange concept to come to grips with initially – you can be reading some information from a page in the United States for example, then with a click of a mouse button are suddenly connected to another server in Russia for example. This idea of roaming around the world using such links is how the term “surfing the web” has arisen. Web pages are typically set up by three different groups of people – special interest organisations wanting to provide information to Internet users on their special subject, companies using them for commercial purposes and individuals who just think it’s cool (a very overused word on the net) to have their own web page. Each web page has its own unique identification address. Quite a few organisations also provide search facilities on the web. These search programmes allow you to enter text for particular topics on which you would like to find information. Databases of web details are then scanned and you are presented with a list of related pages. Clicking on the name of a page you are interested in will connect you to that page. The easiest way to describe the web is to lead you through some examples and a great starting point is the Aussie Aviator page (address https://www.aopa.com.au/). The Aussie Aviator page is described as “A Web Resource for pilots, aircraft owners and aviation enthusiasts, presented by AOPA Australia”. The initial, or home, page comprises around twenty topics, all of which have been set up as hot text items. Information available through this page includes: Aviation weather forecasts and satellite images; Topics of current interest (ELT compliance, airspace system, RAPAC traffic); General AOPA information; Calendar of aviation events; Directories for aviation related organisations and people; GPS/GNSS update; Links to other aviation and non aviation sites. As mentioned above, many individuals have their own web pages. One such person is Richard Muirden in Melbourne (https://www.rmit.edu.au:80/richard/). Richard has two main passions – commercial airlines and aircraft, and Shostakovich. His pages contain lots of details on both subjects. Richard also travelled on the first revenue service of the Boeing 777 in the United States and he has created a number of pages outlining the 777 project and describing the flight. The pages include a number of photographs of the 777 and from his trip on the aircraft airlines are now realising the marketing potential of the web with most of the large airlines now having pages. Their purposes in setting up the pages vary markedly. As an example, the Lufthansa page (https://www.tkz.jh-rpl.de/lufthansa/flug-e.html) allows users to select cities between which they want to travel and a date. The page then provides them with a list of flights and departure times. Virgin Airlines page (https://www.fly.virgin.com/atlantic) has fare details for its various sectors. Tigerfly, claiming to be the world’s smallest airline (based in the UK) also has a web page (https://ayla.avnet.co.uk:80/tigerfly) outlining its Tiger Moth joyflight operations around Oxford. Many other airlines use the pages to provide potential customers with details of their equipment and services. Australia’s airlines haven’t been left behind in the Internet rush, with both Ansett and Qantas having web pages. The Ansett page (https://www.ansett.com.au) contains details on current advertised specials with the airline, products and services, holiday destinations and overseas port details. When I was writing this article the featured port was Bali with the pages including both text and pictures from this holiday destination. There’s also a special bonus for people connecting to the Ansett web page. You can download a copy of a special screen saver developed by the company (screen savers are designed to prevent burning of your computer screen when it’s turned on but not being used). The screen saver comprises images of Ansett aircraft (from 747 to F28) which “fly” across your screen at a speed controlled by you. You can also optionally display information about each of the aircraft. The Qantas web pages (https://www.anzac.com/qantas/qantas.html) comprise information about Qantas routes and fares, awards and achievements, general information and passenger services. At the time of writing they also contained two interesting articles on koalas which were part of a successful US advertising campaign and a history of Qantas. Of particular interest to me are the fleet details for both Qantas and its regional operators. Simple images of each of the aircraft can also be downloaded. The major airline manufacturers also have a presence of the web. Boeing’s page (https://www.boeing.com) contains the top current news stories from the company – “Egyptair Chooses Boeing 777s”, “Boeing Names India Executive”, “Plans New Bombay Office” and “Boeing Strengthens Market Position in 1995” were the main feature stories at the time of writing. There are also facts and figures about the company, news releases and product and services directories. Both McDonnell Douglas and Daimler-Benz also have pages on the web. The pages described above are just an incredibly small subset of those available. Table 2 contains a directory of some miscellaneous aviation related pages on the web (mainly US based), and gives an indication of the variety of information available. It is, by no means, a definitive list.

Summary

As I mentioned above, it’s important to not think of Internet as something for computer boffins only – it can be enjoyed by anyone. I hope that this brief outline has given you an indication of the wealth of information available on aviation and just about any other topic imaginable. Also, remember that the examples mentioned above generally relate to commercial aviation because that just happens to be my area of interest. There’s bound to be stacks of information in your particular field of interest – the real fun and enjoyment is finding it as you navigate around the world. A local ISP (they advertise in the newspapers) should be able to give you a practical demonstration. Paul Daniel is a computer consultant with Hobart based company Prologic.