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The launch-site overlay catalog

AltosUI ships with a worldwide catalog of rocketry-club launch sites — 177 sites across 11 countries, including all the major US rocketry clubs. Toggle the overlay on and each site appears on the Map tab as a shaded circle, sized to the typical launch field. It is a small feature that pays off in two specific places: orienting yourself at an unfamiliar event, and keeping a busy launch day readable on a crowded map.

What the overlay shows

Every site in the catalog is represented by a shaded circle on the map, centered on the launch area and sized roughly to the typical flying footprint of that club. Zoom out and you see every club field in a region at a glance; zoom in and the circles stay sized appropriately so the map does not become a forest of overlapping dots.

Tap a circle and you get the site's name and a link to its website — the official page for the club that runs that field. That is the single source of truth for when they fly, what rules apply, and who to contact for waivers or membership.

Turning the overlay on

The overlay is a setting, off by default for anyone who does not want it. Turn it on in AltosUI's settings and the circles appear on the Map tab. Turn it off again and they vanish. Your preference persists between app launches, so you only set it once.

The Map tab still shows everything else it would show regardless — your position, the pad, your rocket's GPS track, any annotations for live trackers — with the site circles layered underneath as a reference.

Interacting with a site circle

The interaction changes depending on whether any of your trackers are flying inside that circle.

When no trackers fall within the circle, tapping it brings up the site name and the link to the club's website. That is the simple case — you are looking at the catalog entry.

When one or more of your trackers is inside the circle, tapping it toggles the visibility of flight annotations inside that site. This is the feature that matters on a busy launch day. Picture a club flight where four or five rockets went up on different frequencies in a short window and your map has accumulated a mess of tracks, pads, and labels overlapping each other inside the field. Tap the circle and the inside-site annotations collapse so you can read the map; tap again to bring them back.

It is a small bit of decluttering, but the alternative — squinting at stacked labels and zooming past them — is worse than the feature itself might sound.

How the catalog reaches your phone

The catalog comes from Altus Metrum's public site list — the same list AltosUI desktop and AltosDroid read. AltosUI iOS does not maintain its own list; it shares the one catalog with the rest of the Altus Metrum clients, so an update reaches every app the next time each one refreshes.

The app checks for a fresh copy at launch. If the cached copy is more than 24 hours old, or has never been downloaded, it pulls the current list in the background and replaces the local cache. The download is automatic and silent — there is no manual refresh button and no progress UI, because the list is small and rarely changes.

When there is no network at launch, the app falls back to the last good copy on disk. On the very first run with no network yet, it falls back to a default list bundled with the app, so the overlays still appear at fields without cell coverage. If you already have offline maps downloaded for a site (see pre-load offline maps before you leave Wi-Fi or cell coverage), the catalog and the tiles work together transparently — circles on real terrain, no network required.

Scale and coverage

The current catalog covers 177 sites across 11 countries, including all the major US rocketry clubs. The specific clubs and sites are not listed on this guide page on purpose — the in-app overlay is the authoritative list, and it refreshes from Altus Metrum's shared catalog on a 24-hour cycle rather than with a static web page. If you want to see whether a particular field is in the catalog, the answer is: turn the overlay on, pan to the coordinates, and look for a circle.

What to do if a site is missing

Because the catalog is the single shared list used by AltosUI desktop and AltosDroid as well as AltosUI iOS, additions and corrections are submitted to Altus Metrum directly rather than to us. From maps.altusmetrum.org, Altus Metrum points users at the contact form on Bdale's shop at shop.gag.com/contact/. A useful request carries:

  • The club name and a link to its website.
  • The approximate center coordinates of the launch area.
  • A rough radius that covers the typical flying footprint.

Once the upstream list is updated, every AltosUI iOS install picks up the new site at its next 24-hour refresh — no app update required. If you would rather have us pass the request along, the support page and altosui@ironsheep.biz both work.

Using the overlay at an unfamiliar site

The catalog earns its keep most obviously when you travel for a launch. You drop a pin at the club's advertised coordinates, turn the overlay on, and suddenly the pad area, the recovery area, and the rough boundary of the field are all on screen in context. Combined with the launch-site map overlay feature page, it is the quickest way to orient yourself at a site you have never flown before.

Pair that with downloaded offline tiles for the same coordinates and you arrive prepared. The circle tells you where you are in the club's normal footprint, the tiles show you the actual terrain, and your Pad and Flight tabs do the rest when the rocket goes up.

Using the overlay at your home field

At a field you fly regularly, the catalog is less about orienting and more about decluttering. You know where the pads are; what you care about on a busy day is being able to read the map without five annotations stacking on top of each other. Toggling annotations by tapping the circle is the answer. You spend a lot less time zooming in and out to find the one tracker you actually care about.

For club officers and launch directors juggling several flights across a day with Multi-Tracker, this pairs particularly well — the same circle that collapses the annotations is a quick way to triage the map when the pace picks up and you’re switching between trackers.

What the overlay is not

The overlay is a visual catalog and a map-decluttering control, not a waiver check, not a schedule, and not a membership database. It tells you where a club flies and links to the club. Anything about when they fly, what rules apply, and who can fly is on the club's website — follow the link from the circle.

If your site is not in the catalog yet, send it in. The catalog is only as good as the community makes it.