Weight and Balance Spreadsheet.

evanrwilson

evanrwilson

Filing Flight Plan
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May 13, 2013
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Display name:
Evan
Greetings Pilots of America community!

I’ve developed a Weight and Balance spreadsheet for use on iphones and ipads.

Can anyone suggest any ideas as to how I can get it converted to and App?

The problem with sharing it in it’s current format is that I can’t protect the formulas used in making the calculations.

I’ve attached some screenshots.

Many thanks,

Evan.04008C13-5880-4D97-A229-AF6C9775C8A7.jpeg 8DF384A0-5689-4189-9FB7-37BF1CFD91DE.jpeg
 
No idea how to get it converted to a commercial app to sell, but all of the EFBs out there, free and subscription, already provide this, so your market may be small. It’s a really nice W&B sheet that you made, though.
 
Well, there are people you can hire for this. However, there are already a number of decent W&B apps in existence already. Is there something your spreadsheet provides that the others don't?

Edit: @Lachlan beat me to it.
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
Protect the formulas? This isn’t rocket science.
Click to expand...

I think he meant "protect" as in not accidentally overwrite/erase. Not protecting intellectual property rights.

But your point is valid. Anyone who needs a W&B calculator had to learn the formulas to get the certificate required to need it.
 
How about converting it to an iSpreadsheet format, since there is already an app for that.


Tom
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
How about converting it to an iSpreadsheet format, since there is already an app for that.


Tom
Click to expand...
I fear that any format with spreadsheet will allow access to the formulae. Does ispreadsheet prevent this?
 
evanrwilson said:
I fear that any format with spreadsheet will allow access to the formulae. Does ispreadsheet prevent this?
Click to expand...

Don’t know, I only use it for my own spreadsheets, and they are relatively simple ones at that...including W&B...but no fancy graphics.


Tom
 
Ravioli said:
Do you think you have some magical new formula for weight and balance?
Click to expand...
He probably wants to protect the formula from inadvertent alteration. Strange things can happen in software...
 
Just upload it to Google Drive. I believe they support locked fields.
 
Nice looking spreadsheet, but I think you may have missed the boat on making and selling an App; our own @jesse wrote a very successful app (W & B Pro) and has stepped away from it (I *think*) because the market's saturated. But maybe he'll chime in here.

In any event, if you want to get an App out there (of whatever kind), you either need to learn how to program apps (a non-trivial exercise, from my mildly-educated perspective), or hire a skilled app developer to code it for you, and get it through submission and acceptance (also not a trivial act).
 
Yeah, formulas for weight and balance aren't hard. I have a spreadsheet where I can put in the limits as they appear on the TCDS for any airplane and it'll work. Definitely not rocket science.

You can't just "convert" a spreadsheet into an app. A spreadsheet is a spreadsheet and requires spreadsheet software like Excel or Numbers to "run" because it's just a per-cell set of instructions to display a number for the most part. An app is (or at least can be) much more complex, so requires you to use a programming language and development environment that's capable of much more than a spreadsheet. To my knowledge, there aren't any "spreadsheet runtime" containers to convert a spreadsheet into an app.

But, since weight and balance is such a trivial problem, you wouldn't get any money from selling it as an app anyway. So, ya might as well just upload it somewhere if you want others to use it.
 
well, there goes his chance of joining the Zuckerberg bourgeoisie. You people are ruthless playa hatas! :D
tenor.gif
 
I made about 60 grand off WnB Pro - an iOS app - which I built in about ten days. Granted I build software things for a living.

The revenue stream dropped to where it no longer was worth my time, primarily because I already sold WnB Pro to about every pilot that had an iOS device, along with ForeFlight finally entering the market among others.

I ended up selling it and all the associated IP to a developer out of Austin, TX. AFAIK he is still supporting it.

I would not waste your time on this. The market opportunity was eight years ago, not today. Come up with an idea that hasn’t alrasdy been solved by everyone.

I did well with WnB Pro because I was the first one to make weight and balance not suck on an iPhone. It was incredibly flexible and allowed people to share their data. Now every WnB app can do that.
 
Thanks for all of your comments.

The plan is to target airlines that presently use manual, outdated, or expensive load-control systems.

Goals:
1. Create a program with a similar user interface and output as the spreadsheet version, even if it means having to learn to code.

2. Get the program approved by: Boeing, FAA, EASA, and other aviation authorities.

3. Offer it as a cheaper option.

Below are some screenshots for weight and balance on the 737 NG done with Numbers for IOS.

The last screenshot is for comparison with an approved system.
9E86C290-0005-437D-BC22-68EEA6E6F356.png
C4C34D67-870A-475C-AE77-6A79042F930C.png

B79BCE5D-B88D-4126-9FC8-58DF402A230F.jpeg
 
You’re wanting to build an application to handle the weight and balance for airlines? And get it approved by the FAA (and probably manufaturer)? What makes you think they will ever buy it? They have their systems and it will take years of “enterprise sales tactis” to even begin to get a foot in their world...and that isn’t going to happen unless you can show them real value. Plus you have the whole problem of them not wanting this to begin with.

Airlines have more software engineering power than you realize. You’re not going to outsoftware them with a couple thousand dollars. They’ve already written a lot of code to handle their weight and balance systems.

They’re going to have all kinds of crazy integrations and **** on systems like this. You’re not going to be able to replace what they’re doing and integrate like they’ll want with a spreadsheet or any simple application.

Figure you’re going to need a couple full-time engineers, they’re going to cost you six figures each. You’ll also need to spend deep six figures on a leader from the airline industry that has the right connections. Then you’re going to have to pay for that person to wine and dine people for a few years.

Figure on burning at least 500K a year..for..well..probably forever..before you see revenue. I have no idea how you’d ever get enough revenue to pay for the engineering. Market is way too damn niche.

If you don’t have 1M to spend, your goal is not realistic. You are putting the cart way before the horse. You dont need a mobile application - you need a business plan.

Building software is easy. Building software that people will actually pay for and then figuring out how to distribute it to said people is NOT easy and is NOT a given. Focus on that problem first.

If you’re determined to ignore all my advice, and proceed anyways, please at least do yourself a favor and obey this rule: do not write a LINE of code until you have a signed contract with revenue attached for the product.
 
What @jesse said.

Reminds me of a good friend of mine, who used to have all kinds of ideas of things he wanted to do... But he never really thought about how he was going to get someone else to pay for him to do those things.

I would imagine, in this case, that the airlines themselves have this stuff tied into their own software. This would be merely a tiny module inside a much larger system - And it would have to keep track of things like the weights of oversize bags from the main check-in, the exact number of pax (and what seats they were in) when they boarded at the gate, required and actual fuel loads and such from the flight planning side, etc... This isn't mobile-app kind of stuff.

I admire what you're attempting to do - Make it safer by giving the pilots an easier-to-interpret view of their weight and balance. But, like Jesse said, you're going to be flying into the jetstream in a Cessna 150 trying this on your own. You need to sell it to the airlines first, before you start - And that's going to be a hard sell when you don't know how to implement it yet. Probably the best you can hope for is to work as a low-level manager in their IT department, overseeing the implementation of this and other features into their software.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Did you ever do anything with E6B Pro?
Click to expand...
I sold the rights to E6B Pro, its code, and whatnot with WnB Pro.

One of the reason I sold the apps is because they simply quit working. Apple removed them for sale as a result. Not because my code wasn’t good - but because Apple is awful at long-term support and depricated all the API(s) and every damn thing I was using.

The applications needed to be completely rewritten in order to restore them to the market. I had not done mobile development since these apps and would have had to do a lot of learning to fix them.

The guy I sold it to rewrote WnB Pro. I know he looked at re-writing e6b pro but it was actually a lot more work. It had a *lot* of views and functions, though the code was simple, there was simply a LOT of interface to rebuild.

Historically, WnB Pro outsold E6B Pro 10:1. Given that WnB Pro sales weren’t as strong as they used to be, I’m guessing that he determined E6B Pro wasn’t fiscially viable to restore to market.
 
As a former very senior software/system engineer at Boeing, LockMart and others, let me be very candid and unfortunately harsh. We don’t want your software.

Major companies only deal with established companies with proven track records and very smart lawyers on either side. Doesn’t matter how wonderful your software is, they aren’t going anywhere near it. And the airlines won’t allow their employees to use anything not developed inhouse or stringently vetted.
 
I’m still using WnB Pro. I added two new club planes to mine two weeks ago.
 
I wouldn't want the liability of providing something as critical as W&B services to companies that fly missiles full of breathing meat.
 
Sorry to say that, as a SCORE small business mentor, I see this all the time. A client comes in, all excited about some product, has poured a lot of time and money into it but never checked to see if there is a market. I have a client right now who has put two years into developing a non-allergenic, non GMO, gluten fee cookie mix including getting his food handler certification and locating a commercial kitchen for production but he has not talked to a single potential customer! He has no idea whether any stores want this, what his competition might be, what price point he needs to hit, etc. We had kind of a tough meeting yesterday discussing this problem.

So, sorry to say, OP, this is a familiar scenario. I hope you have not tied up a lot of money in your product effort.
 
evanrwilson said:
Thanks for all of your comments.

The plan is to target airlines that presently use manual, outdated, or expensive load-control systems.

Goals:
1. Create a program with a similar user interface and output as the spreadsheet version, even if it means having to learn to code.

2. Get the program approved by: Boeing, FAA, EASA, and other aviation authorities.

3. Offer it as a cheaper option.

Below are some screenshots for weight and balance on the 737 NG done with Numbers for IOS.

The last screenshot is for comparison with an approved system.
View attachment 72238
View attachment 72240

View attachment 72239
Click to expand...
how did you do the W&B graph on sheets?
 
ARMYWALDO said:
how did you do the W&B graph on sheets?
Click to expand...
Since the thread is almost 6 years old, I think he's long gone. AFAIK, Google Sheets doesn't have the ability to do that type of graph. I don't know what he used but Excel and Numbers will do that kind of graph. This from a spreadsheet I did in Excel about 20 years ago.
1740169161307.png
 
I’ve got one similar that Any helped me with. It has the graph. But now I just use foreflight.
 
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