download_tiffs.py

# Download all current FAA sectional GeoTIFFs (zipped)

import urllib, os, csv
from lxml.html.soupparser import fromstring

FAA_CHART_URL = 'http://aeronav.faa.gov/index.asp?xml=aeronav/applications/VFR/chartlist_sect'
BASE_CONTENT_URL = 'http://aeronav.faa.gov/'
DOWNLOAD_DIR = 'download'

data = urllib.urlopen(FAA_CHART_URL).read()
root = fromstring(data)

# Make a download dir if it doesn't exist.
try:
    os.makedirs(DOWNLOAD_DIR)
except OSError:
    pass

# Log publish date
Writer = csv.writer(open('sectionals.csv', 'wb'))
Writer.writerow(['File', 'Date'])

# Find all <tr> elements
for tr in root.xpath('//tr'):
    # Only check those that are align="left"
    if tr.get('align') == 'left':
        # Current charts are in the first td with headers="header2"
        td = tr.xpath('td[@headers = "header2"]')[0]
        for child in td.getchildren():
            # Create a download URL and a local filename
            path = child.get('href')
            url = BASE_CONTENT_URL + path
            filename = path.split('/')[-1]
            
            date = child.text.split('-')[1].strip()
            
            print "Downloading %s" % filename
            urllib.urlretrieve(url, os.path.join(DOWNLOAD_DIR, filename))
            
            Writer.writerow(filename, date)

sectional-tiles.rst

Sectional Tiles

1. Download a sectional GeoTIFF from the FAA:

   wget http://aeronav.faa.gov/content/aeronav/sectional_files/Kansas_City_85.zip
   

2. Unzip:

   unzip Kansas_City_85.zip
   

3. Translate the GeoTIFF to RGBA:

   gdal_translate -of vrt -expand rgba Kansas\ City\ 85\ North.tif temp.vrt
   

4. Install prereqs if necessary:

   aptitude install gdal-python proj-bin
   

4. Run gdal2tiles.py, substituting your bucket instead of my-bucket:

   gdal2tiles.py -t "Kansas City North" -u http://s3.amazonaws.com/my-bucket/ -g <YOUR_GOOGLE_MAPS_KEY> temp.vrt outdir
   

   By default, gdal2tiles.py renders zoom levels 5-10. If you'd like a little more detail, I'd suggest rendering 5-11:

   gdal2tiles.py -t "Kansas City North" -u http://s3.amazonaws.com/my-bucket/ -z '5-11' -g <YOUR_GOOGLE_MAPS_KEY> temp.vrt outdir
   

   If you want to add a new zoom level to an existing set of tiles, give gdal2tiles.py the -e flag, which will cause it to only fill in missing files and will also update the generated HTML/XML to use the new zoom levels.

5. Copy the contents of outdir to S3 and make the bucket and contents public.

6. Visit http://s3.amazonaws.com/my-bucket/openlayers.html

See it in action at http://s3.amazonaws.com/postneo-sectional/openlayers.html and http://s3.amazonaws.com/postneo-sectional/googlemaps.html

I think in step 4 you need to run gdal2tiles.py on the generated temp.vrt file, not the original .tfw.