The MyFlightBook thread

MyFlightBook is the best free iPhone app I have used, in any category. I enter all flights in MyFlightBook and then later transfer them to my paper logbook, mostly because the latter is easier to use with CFIs and DPEs. I like that I don't have to rent my logbook as I would with other app solutions.

There are two features I would like to see but haven't thought to ask for because I'm already getting way more than my money's worth. I was going to say three but apparently it already has one of them and I just didn't find it until I read this thread (starring flight properties). Maybe the other two are already there, too.

1. Some means of filtering cross-country time by distance to help the ratings progress screen out a bit. Right now, I just don't log my sub-50nm cross-country time, but if the app had a way for me to specify which flights or which cross-country hours count toward a rating then I could have a more honest total of my cross-country hours without making it harder to figure out when I am qualified for my IFR check ride or the like.

2. On the ratings progress screen, it would be nice if the app consistently remembered which rating I am working on so I didn't have to choose it all the time. I do know it's hard to make little things like that persist in an app, given how the Chamberlain garage door app still makes me put in my password 100% of the time I want to use it to open the door while driving. So in any event, the drop-down menus could be better implemented as giant push buttons to make the screen easier to use quickly to find the rating you are after. As currently set up, I have to zoom in to accurately use the drop-down boxes and then the refreshing process that it goes through after you fill the first drop-down box makes it lose the zoom, which makes me accidentally push the Gold Seal link about a third of the time.

That's it. A free app that I use every time I stumble into an airplane and almost every time I even think about airplanes is only missing two features. Simply amazing.
 
iamtheari said:
1. Some means of filtering cross-country time by distance to help the ratings progress screen out a bit. Right now, I just don't log my sub-50nm cross-country time, but if the app had a way for me to specify which flights or which cross-country hours count toward a rating then I could have a more honest total of my cross-country hours without making it harder to figure out when I am qualified for my IFR check ride or the like.
Click to expand...

Woops, not sure how I missed this post last week; apologies for the delay! Anyhow, there are several ways you can log cross-country time in MyFlightbook:
  • Technically, any flight where you leave the pattern is cross-country flight. MyFlightbook can let you search for "non-local" flights to get this time. For performance, it does a hack (looks at the length of the Route field), so if you fly in the pattern at KXXX you should just log it as "KXXX" and not "KXXX-KXXX" or "KXXX-LCL" (both of which look like non-local flights).
  • There are also properties for Cross Country time less than 25nm, less than 50nm, and over 50nm, which you can use to categorize cross country time, if you like
  • And, of course, you can use the vanilla "Cross Country" field, which doesn't specify a distance. I personally use 50nm as my threshold for this, since that meets pretty much all "cross-country" requirements, but that's just me.
Note that ratings progress will look at the airports and compute distance for things where a specific distance is required - e.g., your 250nm cross-country flight, or where a leg of the flight has to exceed a certain threshold...

iamtheari said:
2. On the ratings progress screen, it would be nice if the app consistently remembered which rating I am working on so I didn't have to choose it all the time.
Click to expand...

I'll have to look at that; on the web page, it does indeed remember that (using a cookie) so that when you come back it goes right back to the same rating. On the mobile app, I'm just loading the web page, but I must not be persisting the cookie. Are you using Android or iOS?
 
EricBe said:
Woops, not sure how I missed this post last week; apologies for the delay! Anyhow, there are several ways you can log cross-country time in MyFlightbook:
  • Technically, any flight where you leave the pattern is cross-country flight. MyFlightbook can let you search for "non-local" flights to get this time. For performance, it does a hack (looks at the length of the Route field), so if you fly in the pattern at KXXX you should just log it as "KXXX" and not "KXXX-KXXX" or "KXXX-LCL" (both of which look like non-local flights).
  • There are also properties for Cross Country time less than 25nm, less than 50nm, and over 50nm, which you can use to categorize cross country time, if you like
  • And, of course, you can use the vanilla "Cross Country" field, which doesn't specify a distance. I personally use 50nm as my threshold for this, since that meets pretty much all "cross-country" requirements, but that's just me.
Note that ratings progress will look at the airports and compute distance for things where a specific distance is required - e.g., your 250nm cross-country flight, or where a leg of the flight has to exceed a certain threshold...



I'll have to look at that; on the web page, it does indeed remember that (using a cookie) so that when you come back it goes right back to the same rating. On the mobile app, I'm just loading the web page, but I must not be persisting the cookie. Are you using Android or iOS?
Click to expand...

Thanks for responding. Does the 8710 form display calculate cross-country PIC from the generic cross-country field? If so, then I'll keep using that one for 50+nm and fill in the <50nm property for other flights.

Regarding the cookies issue, I am using iOS. Maybe the cookie just expires more often than I look at my ratings progress?

And I did think of another feature request. Maybe this is already in the app and I'm just not smart enough to find it (see above discussion of cross-country logging for another example of this). It would be really nice for the currency tab to show medical currency. I have a third-class medical so I only care about when it expires and I am downgraded to sport pilot privileges, but those with higher-class medicals would probably want it to show when they downgrade to lower levels incrementally. Like this:

Medical / Third-class expired 5/31/2016
-or-
Medical / Second-class until 5/31/2017
-or-
Medical / Second-class expired 5/31/2016
(Third-class until 5/31/2020)

You can calculate it all from medical class, medical date, and date of birth.

Incidentally, I want to compliment you on the currency tab. It already has great features, such as automatically figuring out that I want to know when my taildragger currency will run out and then telling me. That's why I suspect you just outsmarted me with the medical currency thing, given how much else that tab seems to cover.
 
iamtheari said:
Thanks for responding. Does the 8710 form display calculate cross-country PIC from the generic cross-country field? If so, then I'll keep using that one for 50+nm and fill in the <50nm property for other flights.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's what it uses. So cross-country-PIC for a given flight is computed as MIN(PIC, Cross-country); Night PIC is MIN(PIC, Night), etc. But yes, "Cross-country" is the main cross-country field.

iamtheari said:
Regarding the cookies issue, I am using iOS. Maybe the cookie just expires more often than I look at my ratings progress?
Click to expand...
Looks like the cookie sticks around until the next time the app loads. I just checked, it appears that I need to do some work to preserve cookies; added that to my list for the next update.

iamtheari said:
And I did think of another feature request. Maybe this is already in the app and I'm just not smart enough to find it (see above discussion of cross-country logging for another example of this). It would be really nice for the currency tab to show medical currency. I have a third-class medical so I only care about when it expires and I am downgraded to sport pilot privileges, but those with higher-class medicals would probably want it to show when they downgrade to lower levels incrementally. Like this:
Click to expand...

I do this; not with the waterfall you describe, but you can enter your medical on the website (under Pilot Info on the Profile tab; you can get to this from the app too where it links to more settings on the website). If you add a medical, it will show up in currency.
 
EricBe said:
I do this; not with the waterfall you describe, but you can enter your medical on the website (under Pilot Info on the Profile tab; you can get to this from the app too where it links to more settings on the website). If you add a medical, it will show up in currency.
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Told you so. Way ahead of me. Thanks for the tip. :)
 
Quick question.... the "dual" spot is for dual received as a student with a cfi in the plane, yes?
 
korben88 said:
Quick question.... the "dual" spot is for dual received as a student with a cfi in the plane, yes?
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Yes. Generally it's not just student with a CFI in the plane but it's where you're actually receiving instruction. (There are scenarios where you can have an instructor on board but aren't receiving instruction, in order to substitute for solo time where insurance etc. would otherwise be difficult).
 
Okay, I goofed up. When I hand jammed my data I included "LCL" in my routes whenever I had a local flight. Anyway I can remove this without going through line by line?
-Matt
 
mitbpilot said:
Okay, I goofed up. When I hand jammed my data I included "LCL" in my routes whenever I had a local flight. Anyway I can remove this without going through line by line?
-Matt
Click to expand...

Having done a bit of editing of my stuff, one solution is to do the export to CSV, open in Excel and edit (don't add things at the same time) and reimport.

There's some docs in the site about how this works, when you export there's a field that's a serial ID of the entry and when you reimport it knows that's an edit. Don't dump that field or you'll duplicate every log entry! Heh.

Anyway -- that may be all wrong but there are some docs about it up there... Heh. That's what I remember on a Friday night.
 
denverpilot said:
Having done a bit of editing of my stuff, one solution is to do the export to CSV, open in Excel and edit (don't add things at the same time) and reimport.

There's some docs in the site about how this works, when you export there's a field that's a serial ID of the entry and when you reimport it knows that's an edit. Don't dump that field or you'll duplicate every log entry! Heh.

Anyway -- that may be all wrong but there are some docs about it up there... Heh. That's what I remember on a Friday night.
Click to expand...

That was going to be exactly my proposal. Trouble is that "LCL" is a valid IATA airport identifier. :( Maybe I should have an option to suppress "LCL". But it's also unnecessary - if you do touch and go landings at KPAE, simply logging "KPAE" should capture that, no?
 
EricBe said:
That was going to be exactly my proposal. Trouble is that "LCL" is a valid IATA airport identifier. :( Maybe I should have an option to suppress "LCL". But it's also unnecessary - if you do touch and go landings at KPAE, simply logging "KPAE" should capture that, no?
Click to expand...

I think what you want is to modify the destination field from LCL to be the same as the airport your departed from. ;)


Edit:Oops. Replied to Eric instead of the Requestor. Ha

Oh well, he'll see it
 
Okay I downloaded the csv and used the find and replace function of excel to delete all my "LCL" entries. Eric, I don't think you need to make any special options to suppress LCL. You're right, it's totally unnecessary. Thanks for all of your help and a very useful product!
 
Eric,

Is there a way for "Solo Time" to auto-populate with the "Total Time" if the property "Number of Passengers" = 0? My logbook totals for solo time are way off, historically--I'd have to go back through every entry looking for flights with no passengers to populate the "Solo Time" field and get an accurate count.

In the query section, I can select flights with the property "Number of passengers", but I can't say "where number of passengers = 0", so I can go into all those flights and set Solo Time = Total Time.

Perhaps a logbook export to Excel, populate the solo time, and reimport is the best solution for the historical data, but the idea presented in option 1 would be great (and my guess is it already exists but I haven't found it yet).

Thanks!
 
I'd LOVE to have a "next" and "previous" flight button on the webpage when viewing a flight... would make editing/reviewing much easier than going back to the list.
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Is there a way for "Solo Time" to auto-populate with the "Total Time" if the property "Number of Passengers" = 0? My logbook totals for solo time are way off, historically--I'd have to go back through every entry looking for flights with no passengers to populate the "Solo Time" field and get an accurate count.

In the query section, I can select flights with the property "Number of passengers", but I can't say "where number of passengers = 0", so I can go into all those flights and set Solo Time = Total Time.

Perhaps a logbook export to Excel, populate the solo time, and reimport is the best solution for the historical data, but the idea presented in option 1 would be great (and my guess is it already exists but I haven't found it yet).
Click to expand...

Yeah, couple of challenges make auto-population of solo-time hard. One is that # of passengers is not a required property, so I can't assume that its absence means no passengers. Another is that if you have a lesson, you don't have any passengers (the instructor isn't a passenger, especially if you are still a student), but you aren't solo. And so forth.

My property searching is a bit simple at the moment - just presence/absence of a property.

But what I think I'd suggest doing here is along the lines of what you are thinking: export to excel, filter on the rows where passengers = 0, and set solo time = total time for those rows, then reimport (just those rows is a bit faster, but no harm re-importing existing flights that are unchanged).

Thanks
 
TangoWhiskey said:
I'd LOVE to have a "next" and "previous" flight button on the webpage when viewing a flight... would make editing/reviewing much easier than going back to the list.
Click to expand...
Hi, Troy. I have that one on my "to do" list. It's surprisingly hard at the moment for arcane technical reasons (one of the reasons I put the new logbook page together). But for viewing flights (vs. adding them), I agree that next/previous would be nice to have. A read-only view (with an "edit" button if you wanted to make changes) can also be a lot more compact. It's on my list...
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Eric,

Is there a way for "Solo Time" to auto-populate with the "Total Time" if the property "Number of Passengers" = 0? My logbook totals for solo time are way off, historically--I'd have to go back through every entry looking for flights with no passengers to populate the "Solo Time" field and get an accurate count.

In the query section, I can select flights with the property "Number of passengers", but I can't say "where number of passengers = 0", so I can go into all those flights and set Solo Time = Total Time.

Perhaps a logbook export to Excel, populate the solo time, and reimport is the best solution for the historical data, but the idea presented in option 1 would be great (and my guess is it already exists but I haven't found it yet).

Thanks!
Click to expand...

The only "solo" time that matters is prior to your private pilot certificate.
 
LDJones said:
The only "solo" time that matters is prior to your private pilot certificate.
Click to expand...
For me, that's not entirely true. The ratio of solo time to total time says whether I should trade up to a P-51 or to a Saratoga when the time comes to upgrade. I should start using the number of passengers property too, although I still like having an idea how much time I've spent alone up there.
 
EricBe said:
Hi, Loren. Commercial requires it, recreational uses it, and sport pilot uses it too. Plus it's the sort of thing insurance companies or FBOs will often ask...
Click to expand...

I'm aware of the regs for "solo" time but for logging purposes we log it as PIC. In IACRA for non-rated students PIC number is replicated in solo column. I guess you could log solo anytime you're alone in the aircraft but I don't see it as necessary. For commercial purposes, your PIC time less any dual where PIC was also logged would suffice. The point of the commercial "solo" is to assure you actually have some time NOT under the safety net of at CFI. At least that's that seems to be the objective.
 
iamtheari said:
For me, that's not entirely true. The ratio of solo time to total time says whether I should trade up to a P-51 or to a Saratoga when the time comes to upgrade. I should start using the number of passengers property too, although I still like having an idea how much time I've spent alone up there.
Click to expand...

Doesn't PIC time, less any dual received that was also logged as PIC (training post-certificate) meet that objective? PIC time with passengers seems way more challenging than time spent all alone up there as PIC. At least a lot more is riding on your shoulders.
 
LDJones said:
Doesn't PIC time, less any dual received that was also logged as PIC (training post-certificate) meet that objective? PIC time with passengers seems way more challenging than time spent all alone up there as PIC. At least a lot more is riding on your shoulders.
Click to expand...
The objective for me is deciding if I should choose a plane based on passenger comfort or personal joy. If 10% of my time is with passengers and 90% is solo, then I should not be shopping for a Saratoga. Incidentally, I do agree that PIC with passengers can be a lot more challenging than solo, especially if your passenger happens to spend the flight in a state of panic and the plane does not have an autopilot so you are restricted from meaningful intervention.

One unrelated thing I noticed with MyFlightBook is that it thinks I landed at every airport that I put the code for into the route field, even 3-letter codes that I had intended to mean VORs on my route of flight. Is there a way to remove those airports from my "visited" list so it will only show places I actually landed? I could just list airports of landing in the route field, of course. Is that the intent?
 
iamtheari said:
One unrelated thing I noticed with MyFlightBook is that it thinks I landed at every airport that I put the code for into the route field, even 3-letter codes that I had intended to mean VORs on my route of flight. Is there a way to remove those airports from my "visited" list so it will only show places I actually landed? I could just list airports of landing in the route field, of course. Is that the intent?
Click to expand...

As a logbook rather than a flight planner, MyFlightbook has a deliberate bias towards interpreting codes as airports. But if you add an "@" prefix to the navaid, it tells MyFlightbook to treat it as a navaid rather than an airport. E.g., "PDX @SFO LAX" means that you flew from Portland to LA via the San Francisco VOR, whereas "PDX SFO LAX" means you landed at SFO on the way.
 
EricBe said:
As a logbook rather than a flight planner, MyFlightbook has a deliberate bias towards interpreting codes as airports. But if you add an "@" prefix to the navaid, it tells MyFlightbook to treat it as a navaid rather than an airport. E.g., "PDX @SFO LAX" means that you flew from Portland to LA via the San Francisco VOR, whereas "PDX SFO LAX" means you landed at SFO on the way.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the tip. That works for fly-over airports, as well. Now my IFR training cross-country is accurately listed without someday thinking I landed more times than I really did.
 
The funny thing is, I read @ as "at", which hints to me that it means I went there. Heh. But I get it that it's really just syntactic sugar for the parser. Heh.
 
This is a great app and the only on-line logbook program I use (in addition to my paper log and two different spreadsheets - I know, you don't have to say it).

I do have a question, however. The "Currency" page lists (for me) ASEL - Passengers, ASEL - Night and Flight Review Due. Is there a way to show IFR currency, as well? I just did an IPC a couple weeks ago, which restarted that clock. I didn't find a way to include this. If it's there, point me in the right direction. If not, it might be a nice enhancement.

Either way, great job. I really like this.
 
Ghery said:
This is a great app and the only on-line logbook program I use (in addition to my paper log and two different spreadsheets - I know, you don't have to say it).

I do have a question, however. The "Currency" page lists (for me) ASEL - Passengers, ASEL - Night and Flight Review Due. Is there a way to show IFR currency, as well? I just did an IPC a couple weeks ago, which restarted that clock. I didn't find a way to include this. If it's there, point me in the right direction. If not, it might be a nice enhancement.
Click to expand...

Hi, Ghery. There's a property called "Instrument Proficiency Check (IPC) Received" that you can attach to a flight to indicate that you received an IPC. The way I compute currency is that I compute ALL possible currencies based on your flying and then prune the ones for which you've never been current, so at the moment I'm not seeing 6 approaches + hold within a 6 month window (or any of the other combinations that satisfy it); as a result, I'm pruning the instrument currency. If you attach that to a flight, your IFR currency will start to show up. (I just verified this in your account on my development machine. Hey - we're in the same neck of the woods! I fly out of KPAE...)
 
Hi Eric...

For an aircraft, do the maintenance times/milestones show up in any way like the currency stuff? Do any of the fields auto populate off of flight records? Or is that just for personal record keeping?
 
ircphoenix said:
For an aircraft, do the maintenance times/milestones show up in any way like the currency stuff? Do any of the fields auto populate off of flight records? Or is that just for personal record keeping?
Click to expand...
yes; at the point that you're within about 30 days (I'd have to check the code to be sure), it starts showing up in your currency so that you're aware of the impending deadline. None of these fields populate off of flight records - other than the 100-hr inspection/oil change/accrural, they're all based on calendar time rather than flying time (and I obviously can't reliably compute flying time because I have no way to tell what time isn't being logged in MyFlightbook).

To reduce clutter, I only show aircraft maintenance items in your currency if (a) the aircraft is "active" in your profile (i.e., present in your list of aircraft to fly, which is an option you can choose), and (b) you have actually made an entry on the particular maintenance item in question (the assumption being that if you're renting from an FBO, you don't need to be alerted to these things since they are presumably tracking it).
 
EricBe said:
yes; at the point that you're within about 30 days (I'd have to check the code to be sure), it starts showing up in your currency so that you're aware of the impending deadline. None of these fields populate off of flight records - other than the 100-hr inspection/oil change/accrural, they're all based on calendar time rather than flying time (and I obviously can't reliably compute flying time because I have no way to tell what time isn't being logged in MyFlightbook).

To reduce clutter, I only show aircraft maintenance items in your currency if (a) the aircraft is "active" in your profile (i.e., present in your list of aircraft to fly, which is an option you can choose), and (b) you have actually made an entry on the particular maintenance item in question (the assumption being that if you're renting from an FBO, you don't need to be alerted to these things since they are presumably tracking it).
Click to expand...

Thank you much! Just wanted to check. Plugged in Hobbs today on my plane and noticed I had to manually change it in the engine time field. Didn't know if that was deliberate or if I had messed something up. Thank you!
 
How about getting some airports that no longer exist out of the database. For example Zhans Airport (AYZ) always pops up whe. I am over it, or more so landing at KFRG. Especially being they were about a mile apart. I know it's not a big deal for me to just delete, but every now and the. I do forget to take it out before I save the flight.
 
TommyG said:
How about getting some airports that no longer exist out of the database. For example Zhans Airport (AYZ) always pops up whe. I am over it, or more so landing at KFRG. Especially being they were about a mile apart. I know it's not a big deal for me to just delete, but every now and the. I do forget to take it out before I save the flight.
Click to expand...
That's a harder one. I keep old airports in the database quite deliberately. After all, if you landed at AYZ years ago, you'd want to keep that fact as long as possible. A logbook is a historical record, not a flight planner, so I want to respect that as much as possible. About the only time I'll remove an old airport code is if the code itself gets re-assigned to a new airport; the newer one takes priority due to the higher likelihood of use.

I'm curious, though, why AYZ is popping up for you. You might want to adjust your trigger speeds downward a bit to reduce false-positive takeoffs/landings, if that's the issue.
 
korben88 said:
What do you mean "pop up"
Click to expand...
I am assuming that TommyG is referring to auto-fill in the mobile apps - i.e., if you have it autodetect takeoffs/landings, it will automatically append the nearest airport.
 
I don't think I'm using this thing to it's full potential :)

I've just been manually copying the info from my hardcopy every couple of flights.
 
korben88 said:
I've just been manually copying the info from my hardcopy every couple of flights.
Click to expand...
Here's how I use it: I have autodetection on (recording is optional) and set the speed typically to about 70kts as the trigger speed for my club's mooney. Much lower than that and it doesn't register touch-and-go landings reliably, much higher than that and it gives false positives if you do slow flight into a strong headwind (i.e., you can easily get below 100kts ground speed, don't want that triggering a landing). I also tell it to set the total time based on engine and to set the hobbs based on total time or engine.

As part of my pre-flight, I set the starting hobbs for the flight, and tap on Engine Start to set it to "now" when I start the engine. When I shutdown, I set the engine stop time to "now" as well; this sets the total time and the ending hobbs time. During the flight, it will also have filled in landings (identifying full-stop and night landings), cross-country time (if you log landings >= 50nm apart), and night time, as well as the airports at which I've landed. I can press-and-hold any of the other time fields to cross-fill from the Total field (e.g., PIC or IMC), add some comments, and I'm done.
 
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