The web site is back up, hopefully with no errors. I've had to upgrade it to a later version of the Content Management System that runs the whole thing. For the technically minded, it's all running under PHP7 now, instead of the previous PHP5.6. Apologies for the interruption, which was caused by the hosting company pulling the rug from under my feet by dropping all support for PHP5.6.

I hope nobody was too inconvenienced by the hiatus: the good thing is that with Covid-19, it might have been the best time to have a website crash :0)

A feature change: The automated logout is longer active, so you'll stay logged in unless you actively log out.

The web site was down this morning, due to my ISP altering stuff without warning - it's now back OK, but expect disruption next week. Sorry about that... (for the technically minded, they changed the site to PHP7, which just doesn't work with the site as is).

The following have changed as at 8th June

1. The maps have all been updated. An extra level (level 11) of zoom has been provided, plus levels 12 and 13 at low-resolution, using the level 11 tiles. An alternative map ('Topo') is now available.
2. Email slots have been reassigned. My hosting company enforces a limit of 750 emails an hour, which was vastly exceeded during the hours between 6 and 9am. This caused many emails to not be delivered successfully during those hours. To fix this, I have transferred the excess to earlier slots in the morning. The 750 users who registered first have had their slots left unchanged. Users who subscribed later have been transferred to an earlier hour. In practice, this should not affect the content of the emails. The 'preferences' tab will now prevent you selecting the full slots, unless previous users have relinquished one of them. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
3. It is now possible to add unmanned balloon sites to the maps. In order to see them, you will have to go to 'preferences', select the 'Flying sites' tab, and change the action of 'Scientific/weather balloon launches' from 'Never show these'.
4. Ditto unmanned aerial vehicles / drone launch sites. Your preferences will have to be updated as above.
5. The check for robots has been removed. Since the new mapping should be vastly cheaper, I've removed the check for bots, which seems to have tripped some of you up. (It was probably caused by you coming here via some complicated Google search).

Sorry about that - it looks like the country lookup service I was using just failed - the maps were being refused, regardless of from where you were. I'v4e turned it off, and the maps should be displayed again. Apologies.

The NOTAM maps have all been updated to use OpenStreetmaps. Underlying the change is a series of updates to the database that I've been holding back for a few years. It might go wrong, bear with me... Let me know if it does, please.

Some new things you can do:

• There is a new item on the main menu - preferences.
    Here you can change your preferences in the same way you can by going to 'my account', then 'edit'. Hopefully, this way is easier. I will withdraw the 'my account' settings in the near future.
• Set up the sites you see on your maps.
   Sites may be displayed by default, be hidden with the chance t reveal then, or to ignored completely.
• Have more comprehensive control over which NOTAMs you see on the maps.
   For example, you could set 'kite flying' NOTAMs to be included in the main set, or to be separated, with the opportunity to hide or reveal them on the maps.
• See cancelled, or expired NOTAMS.
    These are available via the 'Expired NOTAMs' menu item on the left of the page. The storing of old NOTAMs only started during the last day or two, so there isn't much to see at the moment. Eventually there will be six months' worth of expired NOTAMS.

As you will have noticed, the NOTAM maps don't work properly. (Actually they're OK, just rather murky - click the 'OK' button and they'll function just fine). This is due to 'Do No Evil' Google being a bit, er, evil. They're starting to charge for maps. They also appear to be charging 2 or 3 times for every map issued. This complicates things somewhat. My statistics indicate about 16,000 maps were issued by this website in November, but Google have issued dummy invoices for 49,000 maps... They now say that my 'free trial' is over, hence the error messages.

If I can't resolve this, the annual bill will be about £2,000, as far as I can tell, which would make the website cost me a load of money to run.

I'm looking at Boxmap as an alternative supplier. I've already converted all the non-NOTAM maps to use Boxmap instead of Google. Boxmap also charge, but have a higher free limit (50,000 maps per month), and the chargeable excess maps are a little cheaper. If they only charge me once per map, the problem is solved.

If anyone has mapping experience, and can recommend any other map supplier. I'm all ears. I have looked at OpenStreetMap, but they don't want high volume access.

In the meantime, please put up with the slightly dodgy maps :0)