The MyFlightBook thread

Mike Blackburn said:
Yeah, maybe. I read Sim. IMC as being IN THE SIM, but I guess it could mean hood time?
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Hood time is "simulated IMC." You'll be logging a ton of it from now on, to get your rating and then to remain current and proficient with it.
 
iamtheari said:
The "IFR time" property seems to be for your own personal use if you want to track that. The fields that seem to matter are "Sim. IMC" and "IMC."
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That is correct. To be more precise, IFR generally means time spent under instrument flight rules, even if it’s severe clear. The training that they want you to have is training either in actual conditions or under the hood, so you want to be logging simulated IMC or actual IMC. A given flight will contribute MIN(Dual, SImulated IMC + actual IMC) towards the requirement of this rating.
 
@EricBe , I looked in the FAQ but didn't find this: how does myflightbook calculate "night" time? It did not seem to do it correctly for me last night. Here are the details:

From the myflightbook entry:
Engine start: 0011 (Z)
Flight start: 0023
Flight stop: 0123
Engine stop: 0124
Total time: 1.2
Night time: 0.8

Sunset time at the airport (from Foreflight): 2329
Civil twilight: 2357 (estimate from "timeanddate.com")

The whole flight from engine start to stop occurred after civil twilight, so shouldn't it be 1.2 at night? The definition for "night" being "after civil twilight".

Edit: I just read through your blog entry on this topic and it seems to say that you ARE using civil twilight as your "night start" time, with an interesting discussion about the problems involved. But I'm still not sure why it logged mine as 0.8.

Edit #2: I just found your "Day/Night Tool" and it says civil twilight last night was at 00:15, but even this should have resulted in 1.1 night, not 0.8.
 
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RussR said:
@EricBe , I looked in the FAQ but didn't find this: how does myflightbook calculate "night" time? It did not seem to do it correctly for me last night. Here are the details:

From the myflightbook entry:
Engine start: 0011 (Z)
Flight start: 0023
Flight stop: 0123
Engine stop: 0124
Total time: 1.2
Night time: 0.8

Sunset time at the airport (from Foreflight): 2329
Civil twilight: 2357

The whole flight from engine start to stop occurred after civil twilight, so shouldn't it be 1.2 at night? The definition for "night" being "after civil twilight".
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Just approximate from when it was dark outside, this isn’t rocket science.
 
@RussR --- are you using MFB to keep up with your Dual Given hours? Besides the time, what other info are you logging in MFB?
 
AggieMike88 said:
@RussR --- are you using MFB to keep up with your Dual Given hours? Besides the time, what other info are you logging in MFB?
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For instructional flights, I pretty much only have the student's name in there, and the times (DG, PIC, Total). I keep a separate document that shows whatever instructional things we did.
 
RussR said:
@EricBe , I looked in the FAQ but didn't find this: how does myflightbook calculate "night" time? It did not seem to do it correctly for me last night. Here are the details:

From the myflightbook entry:
...
Sunset time at the airport (from Foreflight): 2329
Civil twilight: 2357 (estimate from "timeanddate.com")

The whole flight from engine start to stop occurred after civil twilight, so shouldn't it be 1.2 at night? The definition for "night" being "after civil twilight".

Edit: I just read through your blog entry on this topic and it seems to say that you ARE using civil twilight as your "night start" time, with an interesting discussion about the problems involved. But I'm still not sure why it logged mine as 0.8.

Edit #2: I just found your "Day/Night Tool" and it says civil twilight last night was at 00:15, but even this should have resulted in 1.1 night, not 0.8.
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Hi, Russ. Do you have the telemetry from the flight? That would let me give a definitive answer. Note that the Day/Night tool is only in 5 minute increments. Otherwise, can you send me the route of flight and I can dive into the approximation and see what that says? (Or point me to the flight on the server - the ID of the flight is the number after the slash in flightdetails.aspx or viewpublicflight.aspx in the URL.)

At the end of the day (sorry, couldn't resist that pun), whether it is night depends on your position as well as the time, so civil twilight at your departure airport is less important than where you are when the sun goes below 6 degrees. Or, if you are flying west, for example, you are "chasing" the sunset and that can impact things. Of course, that's only going to be rounding error for short distances and slow aircraft. But I'd have to dive in a bit to answer this.

May be best to take this on email. myflightbook@gmail.com.
 
Silly but perhaps related question: when I look at flight totals for simulated or actual IFR flight, are the totals for the flight hours or only the time logged as simulated (or actual)?
 
EricBe said:
Hi, Russ. Do you have the telemetry from the flight? That would let me give a definitive answer. Note that the Day/Night tool is only in 5 minute increments. Otherwise, can you send me the route of flight and I can dive into the approximation and see what that says? (Or point me to the flight on the server - the ID of the flight is the number after the slash in flightdetails.aspx or viewpublicflight.aspx in the URL.)

At the end of the day (sorry, couldn't resist that pun), whether it is night depends on your position as well as the time, so civil twilight at your departure airport is less important than where you are when the sun goes below 6 degrees. Or, if you are flying west, for example, you are "chasing" the sunset and that can impact things. Of course, that's only going to be rounding error for short distances and slow aircraft. But I'd have to dive in a bit to answer this.

May be best to take this on email. myflightbook@gmail.com.
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Email sent, thanks!
 
jsstevens said:
Silly but perhaps related question: when I look at flight totals for simulated or actual IFR flight, are the totals for the flight hours or only the time logged as simulated (or actual)?
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Each total corresponds to the field in a given flight. So if you're looking at all totals, then the total for simulated IMC is the sum of the simulated IMC field for all of the flights, which may not equal the total flight hours for that flight.

Note that if you search for flights that contain, say, actual IMC time, then that acts as a filter on which flights are included in totals, but does not change the meaning of each individual total. So the IMC in the resulting totals will be your actual IMC as recorded in the matching flights, and the "Total Flight Time" total will be the sum of the total flight time for the matching flights (which is often considerably more than the IMC time).
 
EricBe said:
Each total corresponds to the field in a given flight. So if you're looking at all totals, then the total for simulated IMC is the sum of the simulated IMC field for all of the flights, which may not equal the total flight hours for that flight.

Note that if you search for flights that contain, say, actual IMC time, then that acts as a filter on which flights are included in totals, but does not change the meaning of each individual total. So the IMC in the resulting totals will be your actual IMC as recorded in the matching flights, and the "Total Flight Time" total will be the sum of the total flight time for the matching flights (which is often considerably more than the IMC time).
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Thanks. That’s how I’d expect it to work but I thought it was “inflating” my simulated instrument time. I went back and looked in more detail and I was, apparently, mathematically challenged. Your code was correct.
 
EricBe said:
Hi, Russ. Do you have the telemetry from the flight? That would let me give a definitive answer. Note that the Day/Night tool is only in 5 minute increments. Otherwise, can you send me the route of flight and I can dive into the approximation and see what that says? (Or point me to the flight on the server - the ID of the flight is the number after the slash in flightdetails.aspx or viewpublicflight.aspx in the URL.)

At the end of the day (sorry, couldn't resist that pun), whether it is night depends on your position as well as the time, so civil twilight at your departure airport is less important than where you are when the sun goes below 6 degrees. Or, if you are flying west, for example, you are "chasing" the sunset and that can impact things. Of course, that's only going to be rounding error for short distances and slow aircraft. But I'd have to dive in a bit to answer this.

May be best to take this on email. myflightbook@gmail.com.
Click to expand...

OK, took a look at your telemetry. It starts about 4 minutes before the end of civil twilight, so the night flight should be just slightly less than total flight. I suspect the reason Night recorded much lower is that your options for night flight are set to sunset+1hr to sunrise-1hr (i.e., matching the landing requirements of 61.57(b)). But alas, night flight and night landings are independent, and the definitions of each vary from country to country (which is why I have multiple options for each, which can be set independently of one another).
 
EricBe said:
OK, took a look at your telemetry. It starts about 4 minutes before the end of civil twilight, so the night flight should be just slightly less than total flight. I suspect the reason Night recorded much lower is that your options for night flight are set to sunset+1hr to sunrise-1hr (i.e., matching the landing requirements of 61.57(b)). But alas, night flight and night landings are independent, and the definitions of each vary from country to country (which is why I have multiple options for each, which can be set independently of one another).
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Thanks Eric - as discussed in the email, my autodetect is set for "civil twilight" for night flight. On your recommendation, I have reinstalled the app and will see what happens next time I fly at night. Thanks!
 
Mike Blackburn said:
Loving using myFlightBook. Is there any simple way to have a widget on a personal blog/website that updates hours from myFlightbook?
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Hi, Mike. Yes. Use the RSS feed. Look in the footer of the page. It's currency by default, but if you add "&t=1" to the URL, it will show totals.
 
Can a Stratus be used as a GPS position source for MyFlightBook, if an Android phone is connected to it via Wi-Fi?

I had some GPS issue with my cheap POS Android phone today and was wondering if the Stratus device would pass through position information when connected to an Android phone.
 
RussR said:
Can a Stratus be used as a GPS position source for MyFlightBook, if an Android phone is connected to it via Wi-Fi?

I had some GPS issue with my cheap POS Android phone today and was wondering if the Stratus device would pass through position information when connected to an Android phone.
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I use the system's GPS service; if it "subcontracts" out to Stratus, that's fine, but it's abstracted from me. I don't have any code that explicitly looks for and talks to a Stratus (or any other specific device); Stratus at least used to be Foreflight proprietary, not sure if they still are. But either way, I ask the system for it's location service and then listen as it gives me location reports. If it uses GPS when GPS is present and Stratus when Stratus is present, then it should work.
 
Really like the app. One minor suggestion on flight properties, is there a way to group the properties so the list is a bit more manageable? I used it during my PP training and there were a lot of things I didn't need to sift through - thinking something like breakdowns that would aggregate specific areas like glider, helicopter etc. Perhaps even a grouping tied to the 8710 for each rating PP, IR, Commercial etc.

I have no idea how difficult that would be to do, but I ended up having to redo quite a bit as I realized there were properties for things I was tracking against.
 
I keep forgetting to post this suggestion, and/or forgot if I already did post it: On the aircraft page, is it feasible to put a "today" button when editing the dates such as annual or VOR check?
 
iamtheari said:
I keep forgetting to post this suggestion, and/or forgot if I already did post it: On the aircraft page, is it feasible to put a "today" button when editing the dates such as annual or VOR check?
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Are you talking about the iOS/Android app? On iOS, Delete the date and then tap to set the date; that will go to "Today"; Android has a "Now" button. On the web, when you click the date field it shows a calendar with today's date on the bottom; click that date to quickly pick today.
 
EricBe said:
Are you talking about the iOS/Android app? On iOS, Delete the date and then tap to set the date; that will go to "Today"; Android has a "Now" button. On the web, when you click the date field it shows a calendar with today's date on the bottom; click that date to quickly pick today.
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I'm referring to the iOS app. I did not see the Delete button before you mentioned it. Thanks.
 
Hang 4 said:
Really like the app. One minor suggestion on flight properties, is there a way to group the properties so the list is a bit more manageable? I used it during my PP training and there were a lot of things I didn't need to sift through - thinking something like breakdowns that would aggregate specific areas like glider, helicopter etc. Perhaps even a grouping tied to the 8710 for each rating PP, IR, Commercial etc.

I have no idea how difficult that would be to do, but I ended up having to redo quite a bit as I realized there were properties for things I was tracking against.
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I can answer this on two levels. Indeed, there are currently 626 items in the list of properties, which I agree is by itself unmanageable. And while every property in that list has some constituency that relies on it, any single pilot only ever uses a fairly small subset of the list. Of course, every pilot uses a distinct subset.

At one level, there is some basic customization present already:
  • You can search (click the magnifying glass on the web, or type in the top of the property list on the mobile apps) to quickly find a property.
  • Once you use a property in a flight, that property sorts to the top of the list of properties (mobile apps) for easy access in the future, or shows up automatically* for subsequent flights (web). That way, the subset that you use is available for quick access.
  • On the mobile apps in particular, you can press-and-hold a property to make it stick to the new flight page for easier access.
  • Finally, you can reduce clutter by going to Profile->Preferences on the web and you can "blacklist" previously-used properties. A good example of where you might do this is for maneuvers that you did for a given rating, but which you no longer perform on day-to-day flights.
But there's a higher level feature idea there that's been on my list for a long time, but I've never really come up with a good way to implement, and that's the idea of "templates". E.g., if you are, say, flying aircraft-carrier-based jets in the navy and flying gliders recreationaly in your down time, then the set of properties you want for one type a given flight is both fairly well defined and distinct from the set of properties for the other. You would want to be able to pick a "glider" template, or a "carrier jet" template or an "airline pilot" template or a "civil air patrol" template (etc.), and have it pull in the right set of properties for that flight. Or, precisely as you suggest, pull in a template for a given checkride. I think it's a great idea; I just haven't figured out a good way to do it. The specific challenge isn't technical, really, it's UI: how do you create a template, or share templates, or select a template, in a way that doesn't itself add a ton of clutter/complexity itself?

If anybody has thoughts on this and is willing to draw some screenshots, I'd love the help...

*Some properties are flagged as being "one and done" and thus don't show up automatically. E.g., your sign-off for high-performance aircraft; you'll typically only ever log that once, so it doesn't show up automatically.
 
EricBe said:
The specific challenge isn't technical, really, it's UI: how do you create a template, or share templates, or select a template, in a way that doesn't itself add a ton of clutter/complexity itself?
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Would per-aircraft work? I'd imagine that someone who flies from a carrier for work, a glider for fun, and CAP missions from time to time is not going to mix and match aircraft between those use cases. You don't need a line for bolters in the glider and you don't need a line for CAP-specific things in the jet. This of course means that you need to refresh the UI when selecting an aircraft for a new log entry, which may be undesirable.
 
iamtheari said:
Would per-aircraft work? I'd imagine that someone who flies from a carrier for work, a glider for fun, and CAP missions from time to time is not going to mix and match aircraft between those use cases. You don't need a line for bolters in the glider and you don't need a line for CAP-specific things in the jet. This of course means that you need to refresh the UI when selecting an aircraft for a new log entry, which may be undesirable.
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y'know, that's actually a *really* good way to do it. Need to noodle a bit more; I think there are sort of two categories of templates: "shared" (e.g., most checkrides) and "custom" (specific to your situation). But let me move that from my "ideas to think about" list to "features to implement" list. Done: https://github.com/ericberman/MyFlightbookWeb/issues/229
 
I got one. With 200-300 aircraft in my list, I'd like to be able to designate the ones I fly now (as opposed to 15 years ago) "Favorites" so they come to the top of the list.
 
midlifeflyer said:
I got one. With 200-300 aircraft in my list, I'd like to be able to designate the ones I fly now (as opposed to 15 years ago) "Favorites" so they come to the top of the list.
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Mark, it already does that - go into the Aircraft tab or page, and uncheck "Show aircraft for new flight" (Android version) or select the down arrow next to the airplane and uncheck "active" (Web version). I don't have the iOS version with me right now but I'm sure there's something similar.
 
EricBe said:
I use the system's GPS service; if it "subcontracts" out to Stratus, that's fine, but it's abstracted from me. I don't have any code that explicitly looks for and talks to a Stratus (or any other specific device); Stratus at least used to be Foreflight proprietary, not sure if they still are. But either way, I ask the system for it's location service and then listen as it gives me location reports. If it uses GPS when GPS is present and Stratus when Stratus is present, then it should work.
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Yeah, I figured it wasn't so much a MFB question but a more generic one for anybody who has tried it. Let me reword:

Can a Stratus (or similar) be used as a positioning source for other apps? For example, can I use a Stratus to navigate with Google Maps? (And therefore, by extension, it would be usable by MFB.)
 
RussR said:
Yeah, I figured it wasn't so much a MFB question but a more generic one for anybody who has tried it. Let me reword:

Can a Stratus (or similar) be used as a positioning source for other apps? For example, can I use a Stratus to navigate with Google Maps? (And therefore, by extension, it would be usable by MFB.)
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The answer used to be "no", but I should reach out to Appareo and ask if that's changed; exclusivity is often time limited.
 
RussR said:
Mark, it already does that - go into the Aircraft tab or page, and uncheck "Show aircraft for new flight" (Android version) or select the down arrow next to the airplane and uncheck "active" (Web version). I don't have the iOS version with me right now but I'm sure there's something similar.
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Thanks Russ and, of course, Eric.
 
FYI - Android and iOS apps both updated today. Primary new feature is "night mode". You can turn it on or off, or have it be automatic based on sunset at your location. (iOS uses "sun is < 0 degrees above horizon" for this, so it will still be a bit bright out; Android is notified by the system to switch to/from night mode, so I don't know what explicit cutover criteria it uses).
 
@EricBe ... what do I need to enter in a flight details or properties so the progress bar for 61.129(a)(3)(v) will start populating?

FF9F81BC-E788-43BA-ABD3-9916E8E0D5D0.jpeg
 
AggieMike88 said:
@EricBe ... what do I need to enter in a flight details or properties so the progress bar for 61.129(a)(3)(v) will start populating?

View attachment 70094
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@AggieMike88 You need to log dual time in a single engine aircraft, and it has to be within 2 calendar months prior to "today". I put "Today" in quotes because it's a moving target. The purpose of this bar is to answer the question "do I have the relevant experience to take the checkride today", so 61.129(a)(3)(v) and it's siblings for other ratings are unique in that they can and do fade over time.
 
EricBe said:
@AggieMike88 You need to log dual time in a single engine aircraft, and it has to be within 2 calendar months prior to "today". I put "Today" in quotes because it's a moving target. The purpose of this bar is to answer the question "do I have the relevant experience to take the checkride today", so 61.129(a)(3)(v) and it's siblings for other ratings are unique in that they can and do fade over time.
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Marking the flight with dual instruction received did it. Thanks!
 
I can't figure out what the stuff in the red means.
c87549ca4fa48daf2a01aee0685b3188.jpg


Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk
 
"Refresh your aircraft list" means just that: go to the aircraft tab and choose refresh from the upper right. That will download the aircraft that are in your profile. Then go into each of the flights that had the error (tap on them), switch away from N321DL and then back to N321DL, and try to save the flight again. Should solve it.
 
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