A lot of accidents happen in light and ultralight aviation when pilots collide with powerlines or similar objects. There is already an existing project that aims to warn a pilot before he hits another aircraft. The goal of this project was to develop a system that also warns about collisions with statical objects.

The Swiss Federal Office for Civil Aviation (FOCA) provides a list of statical obstacles. Unfortunately this list doesn?t contain information about the height above sea level. On the basis of a digital terrain height model of Switzerland we developed an algorithm that interpolates the missing information and saves it accordingly. Tests of the obstacle lists had shown that some power lines were running through mountains or where spanning whole valleys. This problem had to be solved by using automated placement of virtual poles.

After that calculation, the data had to be distributed across a network of servers spread all over Switzerland and finally be delivered to the users device in the cockpit via a radio interface.

Furthermore we had to design a database concept that complied with the tight on-board hardware requirements and guaranteed a quick availability of the obstacle data on the users device.

Seven weeks later we can present a system that solves all of these challenges, and will provide a solid base for further development of the IDOCAS project.