Search for user locations?

[damkia]

Would it be possible to be able to do a search for members located in particular general geographic locations, or is this currently possible and I've missed it?

 

This could be useful for "the big trip" planning, and also for introductions to locals in the area.

 

An example of what would be good would be to have a tab on the search engine named "People", with the ability to type "Darwin" and find the name of all members located in Darwin area, increasing in distance from Darwin as you go down the list.

 

I realise that members location within Australia is "usually" listed near their avatar (depending on the member's compliance), but I can't seem to find a way of searching for it.

 

 

[Guest nunans]

I think this is a big missing part of the community at the moment and would be a great tool to help recreational pilots get in contact with other aviators in the area.

 

I recently called RAA in canberra to ask about the possibility of getting the name of any thruster owners in my area as I saw a nice little yellow one flying overhead recently and wondered who it was.

 

The RAA person said there was no easy way for them to search the registration records (even though they have all the information in front of them) for owners or pilot certificate holders in a state or postcode etc. I also asked about privacy etc and she said there was a place on the rego papers to nominate if you did or didn't want to keep your name etc confidential. We concluded that if I a plane flew low enough that I could read the rego number then RAA may be able to look it up and then if the owner has chosen to tick the right box on the paper work then RAA could pass on the name to me.

 

I personally would have no problems disclosing my details to other RAA members for the purpose of being contacted by like minded aviators and I think that would be the case for most of the 10000 members.

 

I wonder though how many of the RAA members are involved in these forums? that would be the limiting factor of the effectiveness of what could be done here by the administrators.

 

I believe RAA should include a "search for other members function" in their website and include all members who are happy to disclose the information.

 

This would be beneficial to the RA community in my eyes and would help us fly safer and share information beyond what happens on this website.

 

The only thing to be carefull of is the councils using it to send bills to aircraft owners for percieved services (as they do with VH aircraft)

 

I think the best way to achieve this is to omit the rego numbers and just include aircraft type, registered owner name, pilot certificate holder names and locations (towns or postcodes would be enough).

 

 

[Admin]

Firstly, in the spec for the updated Airfields section I have included the ability for users to be able to add their contact details, if they choose to do so, on each airfield entry. Users may choose to simply list their site username in the airstrip listing so you can start a private conversation with them about the airfield or even hooking up if you are visiting there.

 

In terms of being able to search for users in a specific location, that is not available with this software...it was with the old one. To add it to this one will require me to pay a third party developer to create it however there is a limitation to it. Currently the "Location" field is NOT compulsory to be completed by a user of the site so having a Location Search function would be limited to only those users that choose to enter their location in that field. If I were to enforce the completion of the Location field for all users it may not be supported by the majority of users on the site.

 

I do think that it is something we could explore though by way of a Poll to get an idea if users would not mind if the Location field was made compulsory or do you think the ability for users to list themselves under a airstrip listing in that section would do?

 

 

[J170 Owner]

What would be cool is a map of Australia with a dot to represent the location of each member. Having said that it would probably be easier to get blood out of a stone...

 

 

[Admin]

What would be cool is a map of Australia with a dot to represent the location of each member. Having said that it would probably be easier to get blood out of a stone...

This can be done very easy however it would only display the members when they were online as it would use geo-locating. To have it display every member then the issues are:

 

1. It would need some extra development (cost)
    
    
   
2. Users would have to have a location entered in their settings (again the question of mandatory or voluntary)
    
    
   
3. The data entered into the location field would have to be in a certain format for Google Maps to distinguish it
    
    
   

 

 

Currently if you click on the location text of a user's post (on the left of the post), a google map opens up in a new window with the location pin pointed. You will notice that I use "Watsonia Melbourne" as my location. If you click that on the l;eft of this post a window will open showing google map with a marker displaying the suburb Watsonia in Melbourne so a user can still be general in their location so they don't have to enter their specific address, just a general location but in a way that Google maps can display it.