The MyFlightBook thread

EricBe said:
No, I don't think so, at least not with Apple's built-in spinner control.
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Reminds me of a conversation one of our head devs had with Google.

“We don’t like your [insert web widget here] for entering dates.”

“We used yours... and it’s a screenshot from your browser.”

True story. LOL.
 
RussR said:
Okay, yeah I guess I could do that. But Google Drive's method for deleting a lot of files isn't very great, at least that I could find, and took a while, so I didn't want to do it again.
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Go to the folder with the backups. Click on the earliest one; shift-click on the most recent one you want to delete. That's how I do it.
 
midlifeflyer said:
Go to the folder with the backups. Click on the earliest one; shift-click on the most recent one you want to delete. That's how I do it.
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Well, sure, but since I had something like 1000 backup files in there and Google was only showing the first (I think) 50 until I scrolled to the bottom, then 50 more, then 50 more, etc., it was quite tedious. For some reason if I pressed Ctrl-A (for "select all" I think), it would select 150 files at a time. So that was slightly less tedious. Plus, each group delete did take a significant amount of time.
 
RussR said:
Well, sure, but since I had something like 1000 backup files in there and Google was only showing the first (I think) 50 until I scrolled to the bottom, then 50 more, then 50 more, etc., it was quite tedious. For some reason if I pressed Ctrl-A (for "select all" I think), it would select 150 files at a time. So that was slightly less tedious. Plus, each group delete did take a significant amount of time.
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Ah! Didn't realize you let it go that long! I guess another alternative would be to delete the entire folder and start over.
 
RussR said:
Well, sure, but since I had something like 1000 backup files in there and Google was only showing the first (I think) 50 until I scrolled to the bottom, then 50 more, then 50 more, etc., it was quite tedious. For some reason if I pressed Ctrl-A (for "select all" I think), it would select 150 files at a time. So that was slightly less tedious. Plus, each group delete did take a significant amount of time.
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Set up Google Drive File Stream on a machine, navigate to folder, and stuff like CTRL-A works great.

Web interfaces suck donkey **** for file management. :)
 
midlifeflyer said:
I've heard of that. Is it usable for individuals or just organizations?
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Huh. They apparently did limit it to GSuite accounts. I didn’t know.

They force the use of Backup and Sync for personal accounts apparently, which isn’t really the same.

(GDFS is more flexible about what it stores locally only streaming what it needs at the time but you can force it to keep copies of specific things. Then it also presents the entire Drive as a disk letter in Winderz or folder on Mac, so asking it to do stuff like “copy from GDrive to this other folder” is simple OS interface stuff.)

No idea why they limit it. It would lower local disk space needed immensely and bandwidth used by free accounts dramatically.

Sorry. Guess that won’t work.

Google has been announcing storage limits and higher pricing across the board anyway, so I’ve been messing around with copying stuff out of our family GSuite — which always was a bad idea: GSuite accounts lose a bunch of family offerings across the board anyway if the Play Store account is a GSuite account — to local NAS storage.

The company is super ticked. GSuite shop. Google sales says forced migration to Google Workplaces is Mar 2021 for everyone. Quoted us (even with a discount) $6 more per user per month to retain the GSuite for Business feature set we already have, and limits placed on all storage as well as combining storage between services.

Getting greedy but also see where they shared that they’re now seeing multiple pedabytes of data uploaded per day. Thus the big push to place quotas on everything now.

Just like cellular carriers, “unlimited” never really meant unlimited.

Oh. The way to do it with Backup and Sync is probably just to sync the whole folder down (it can’t be that big) and then do the delete locally. I’ve been messing with folders bigger than tens of gigs on my project so I forgot a folder full of MFB files probably isn’t anywhere close and would sync down fine.

Just don’t let B&S sync everything down in the settings. Especially if you have a massive GDrive. Change to only sync that one folder.
 
@EricBe - I had a flight today with an interesting route of flight. We did a few maneuvers and then pattern work at KJSO. Here is the auto-generated route of flight:

JKV KJSO JKV KJSO JKV KJSO JKV KJSO JKV KJSO JKV KJSO JKV KJSO JKV KJSO JKV

We did have 8 landings with a full-stop taxi back on each one.

Fun! After some research, it seems that while KJSO is the ICAO code for the airport, JKV is the IATA code. While this is my first time at this airport, I haven't seen this behavior before at any other airport. Is there a setting I need to change (or that I inadvertently changed)?

This is the flight link (note to others, will probably only be visible to Eric, but it was pretty much just a routine "maneuvers and pattern work" flight).
https://myflightbook.com/logbook/Member/FlightDetail.aspx/12061960
 
(If you mark the flight as public, everyone can see the route). Anyhow, what you're seeing is an artifact of the fact that I get my data from a wide variety of (free) sources. Sometimes that data has small inconsistencies. In this case, if you map the flight from JKV to KJSO, you'll see that the codes are both in the database, but are...oh, I'd guess 50ft apart? So if you're on the north side of the airport, autodetection will pick up JKV, and if you're on the south side, you pick up KJSO.

There are two fixes for this (both on my end):
  • Reconcile the positions, so JKV and KJSO are at the same location. (JSO too, actually, since that's also in the database). Done.
  • Designate KJSO as "preferred" in the case of a tie. This was in fact already the case, so if you were on the south you'd be closest to both JSO and KJSO, and it already picked KJSO as the "preferred" nearest (always a good idea to use ICAO codes). But alas, since JKV had a different location, if you were on the north, it picks up the closest.
So the locations are reconciled on the server; the mobile apps only periodically have their databases updated, so it will be until the next update where I include a database update before the mobile apps pick it up.
 
Eric, thank you on behalf of all of the budget fliers who spend a lot of their time within 25 NM of home base. It's simple enough. It's good enough. And doggone it, we like it.

Mark
 
EricBe said:
(If you mark the flight as public, everyone can see the route). Anyhow, what you're seeing is an artifact of the fact that I get my data from a wide variety of (free) sources. Sometimes that data has small inconsistencies. In this case, if you map the flight from JKV to KJSO, you'll see that the codes are both in the database, but are...oh, I'd guess 50ft apart? So if you're on the north side of the airport, autodetection will pick up JKV, and if you're on the south side, you pick up KJSO.

There are two fixes for this (both on my end):
  • Reconcile the positions, so JKV and KJSO are at the same location. (JSO too, actually, since that's also in the database). Done.
  • Designate KJSO as "preferred" in the case of a tie. This was in fact already the case, so if you were on the south you'd be closest to both JSO and KJSO, and it already picked KJSO as the "preferred" nearest (always a good idea to use ICAO codes). But alas, since JKV had a different location, if you were on the north, it picks up the closest.
So the locations are reconciled on the server; the mobile apps only periodically have their databases updated, so it will be until the next update where I include a database update before the mobile apps pick it up.
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No other app developer gives support like this!
 
OK, you've got me curious. What airport is JKV? I recognize that as part of the amateur radio callsign of the former president of a company I worked for from from 1983 to 1995 (Tandem Computers and the prez was W6JKV), but not the airport. :p

BTW, Jimmy was a fantastic guy to work for.
 
Ghery said:
OK, you've got me curious. What airport is JKV?
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It's the IATA code for Jacksonville, TX, which you and I would know as the ICAO code KJSO. So, if you were going to book an airline flight to Jacksonville, TX (if that was even possible), I think your bags would be labeled JKV. IATA codes are 3 letters, so sometimes they're different than ICAO codes just because there aren't as many combinations. I guess JSO is or was used somewhere else.
 
RussR said:
It's the IATA code for Jacksonville, TX, which you and I would know as the ICAO code KJSO. So, if you were going to book an airline flight to Jacksonville, TX (if that was even possible), I think your bags would be labeled JKV. IATA codes are 3 letters, so sometimes they're different than ICAO codes just because there aren't as many combinations. I guess JSO is or was used somewhere else.
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Thanks.
 
@EricBe Would it be possible to have MyFlightbook autodetect engine noise? I know some glider dataloggers do this. I'm asking because I've got a new gig towing gliders, and it'd be nice to be able to automatically track flight time, but I don't want to have to remember to stop and start a new flight if I shut off the engine between tows.
 
Lindberg said:
@EricBe Would it be possible to have MyFlightbook autodetect engine noise? I know some glider dataloggers do this. I'm asking because I've got a new gig towing gliders, and it'd be nice to be able to automatically track flight time, but I don't want to have to remember to stop and start a new flight if I shut off the engine between tows.
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Funny, I've had that request before, and it's been sitting on my list for a long time, but there are two things I've never figured out. One is relatively simple: I'd need to figure out when to arm/disarm listening, so that I'm not draining the battery when you're at home, or doing false positives when you're at a stop light and some noisy truck pulls up next to you. The other (harder) one is figuring out the signal processing to determine engine start/stop. It's been 35 years since I took signal processing in college; I don't remember any of it, and then there's the whole machine learning angle of it now (and finding the training set).

That said, I'll put out a call to anybody reading this thread: anybody have thoughts on how to implement this? The code is open source; I'm willing to do the code if you can help me with what I need to do...
 
this may not be helpful, but the CloudAhoy app has a feature of auto stopping, but you still have to start it. Some people recommend placing an item in the restart checklist to start the CloudAhoy app.

I do have an issue with that app when I'm doing stop and taxi backs or touch and go's in the pattern. I have to turn off the auto stop while practicing.
 
Nub_Pilot said:
this may not be helpful, but the CloudAhoy app has a feature of auto stopping, but you still have to start it. Some people recommend placing an item in the restart checklist to start the CloudAhoy app.

I do have an issue with that app when I'm doing stop and taxi backs or touch and go's in the pattern. I have to turn off the auto stop while practicing.
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it is helpful, actually. I have another feature on the request list that requests a reminder if you've been stopped for more than a minute or two; same idea.
 
I actually love the feature of being able to impart the flights from CloudAhoy and use it for every flight I take. thank you for that integration. right now, as a student, I'm keeping both a written paper logbook and the digital one.

I do have a separate questions about logged entries. If I'm getting dual time with my CFI, do I need my instructor to validate every entry to make them valid or do I only need their verification for certain items like authorization for solo and solo CC?

Thanks
 
About logged entries: I confess I don't know chapter/verse about any regulations around that. Typically in that scenario the CFI does indeed sign the flight (often fills it in for you, to ensure that the requisite training is logged with the correct wording and such), but I'm actually not sure what the regs are around whether that (or the signature) are required to demonstrate that particular training occurred, or if it is just "standard practice". (Can others weigh in here?)
 
EricBe said:
Funny, I've had that request before, and it's been sitting on my list for a long time, but there are two things I've never figured out. One is relatively simple: I'd need to figure out when to arm/disarm listening, so that I'm not draining the battery when you're at home, or doing false positives when you're at a stop light and some noisy truck pulls up next to you. The other (harder) one is figuring out the signal processing to determine engine start/stop. It's been 35 years since I took signal processing in college; I don't remember any of it, and then there's the whole machine learning angle of it now (and finding the training set).
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On the first issue, perhaps the "arming" could be creating a new flight and tapping the Flight Start button. Maybe with a checkbox or switch somewhere to enable the feature

On the second issue, sailplsne competition dataloggers have engine detection, so they can set a flag in the .igc file when the pilot of a self-launch glider turns on the engine. I found this old thread on xcsoar (soaring software) that talks about adding this feature and maybe has some sample code. I don't know if that would be at all useful. https://github.com/XCSoar/XCSoar/issues/124
 
Nub_Pilot said:
I actually love the feature of being able to impart the flights from CloudAhoy and use it for every flight I take. thank you for that integration. right now, as a student, I'm keeping both a written paper logbook and the digital one.

I do have a separate questions about logged entries. If I'm getting dual time with my CFI, do I need my instructor to validate every entry to make them valid or do I only need their verification for certain items like authorization for solo and solo CC?

Thanks
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Under 61.51

h) Logging training time.

(1) A person may log training time when that person receives training from an authorized instructor in an aircraft, full flight simulator, flight training device, or aviation training device.

(2) The training time must be logged in a logbook and must:

(i) Be endorsed in a legible manner by the authorized instructor; and

(ii) Include a description of the training given, the length of the training lesson, and the authorized instructor's signature, certificate number, and certificate expiration date.
 
Well, there's the reference to endorsement. :)
 
Lindberg said:
On the first issue, perhaps the "arming" could be creating a new flight and tapping the Flight Start button. Maybe with a checkbox or switch somewhere to enable the feature

On the second issue, sailplsne competition dataloggers have engine detection, so they can set a flag in the .igc file when the pilot of a self-launch glider turns on the engine. I found this old thread on xcsoar (soaring software) that talks about adding this feature and maybe has some sample code. I don't know if that would be at all useful. https://github.com/XCSoar/XCSoar/issues/124
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On the first issue - if you hhave to tap flight start, then why not tap "start" and forget about the engine noise?

Perhaps a cleaner model is the true block off/on model, with no need for microphone: do engine start/stop and auto-detect block off/on based on motion. So you tap engine start, maybe as you start the engine or maybe 10 minutes prior; doesn't matter. It then creates a geofence of, say, 3-4 meters around the aircraft. When you leave that geofenced area, you note a "block off" time. Whenever you stop, you record that time as a tentative block-on time; if you move again, you clear it. But if you tap "engine stop", then you accept that time. Instead of using engine time or flight time to feed total time, then, you'd use block time (already supported in the code on the mobile devices)

Thoughts?
 
EricBe said:
On the first issue - if you hhave to tap flight start, then why not tap "start" and forget about the engine noise?

Perhaps a cleaner model is the true block off/on model, with no need for microphone: do engine start/stop and auto-detect block off/on based on motion. So you tap engine start, maybe as you start the engine or maybe 10 minutes prior; doesn't matter. It then creates a geofence of, say, 3-4 meters around the aircraft. When you leave that geofenced area, you note a "block off" time. Whenever you stop, you record that time as a tentative block-on time; if you move again, you clear it. But if you tap "engine stop", then you accept that time. Instead of using engine time or flight time to feed total time, then, you'd use block time (already supported in the code on the mobile devices)

Thoughts?
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I'm not sure I totally understand the suggestion, but here's the situation I'm trying to solve for, let me know if you think that matches:

At the beginning of the day I get in the tow plane at the hangar. I start the engine and let it roll forward to check the brakes. I start the flight time.

I taxi out to the runway and do a glider tow. It's a pattern tow, so we go again right away.

The next tow is a high tow, so when I get back down, I shut off the engine next to the runway to wait 10 minutes for the next glider.

At this point, I assume the FAA would say that the aircraft has "come to rest after landing." I don't really know exactly what that means, but I figure shutting off the engine is at least it. So at this point, I'd like MFB to stop counting flight time--without me having to log that off as a flight--and then start again when I fire up the engine and start moving again for the next tow. So I don't know that just monitoring movement would do it, because I might sometimes sit for a short period with the aircraft shut down (at rest?) or a longer period with it still running (not at rest?).

If I have to tap anything in between startup at the beginning of the day and shutdown at the end of the day (or lunch), I'll forget.

It's also possible that I am making this too complicated, as it seems like many tow pilots just log some estimated time at the end of the day based on the number of tows they did, but I like the idea of logging the actual time.
 
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And then a loud truck crosses the ramp and the logging software logs 0.1 as it passes.

Whole thing sounds silly to me.

“Alexa, log my takeoff!” LOL
 
Lindberg said:
I'm not sure I totally understand the suggestion, but here's the situation I'm trying to solve for, let me know if you think that matches:

At the beginning of the day I get in the tow plane at the hangar. I start the engine and let it roll forward to check the brakes. I start the flight time.If I have to tap anything in between startup at the beginning of the day and shutdown at the end of the day (or lunch), I'll forget.

It's also possible that I am making this too complicated, as it seems like many tow pilots just log some estimated time at the end of the day based on the number of tows they did, but I like the idea of logging the actual time.
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Perhaps, but what you describe suggests to me using the pause/play functionality. If you do autodetection, you can press the green pause button when you shut down and when you start up again, press play. When auto-total (from engine, flight, or block time) computes your total time at the end of the flight, it will subtract out the paused time.
 
EricBe said:
Fascinating. Every paper logbook I've ever had put the Total Time as the last field, so it never occurred to me to do that first. It's certainly trivial effort to do, I'm just worried about whether it will make sense to a majority of people. Thoughts?
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I think it's a good idea.
 
EricBe said:
About logged entries: I confess I don't know chapter/verse about any regulations around that. Typically in that scenario the CFI does indeed sign the flight (often fills it in for you, to ensure that the requisite training is logged with the correct wording and such), but I'm actually not sure what the regs are around whether that (or the signature) are required to demonstrate that particular training occurred, or if it is just "standard practice". (Can others weigh in here?)
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Yes, the instructor endorsing training given is a regulatory requirement.61.51(h).
 
iamtheari said:
...it would have been a POA ROC violation. Standard practice here is, and has always been, that we post questions about the regulations before taking 2 minutes to look at them. :)
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.... and do a classic multi page C’Ron and R&W argument about the reg and all the left field general counsel interpretations
 
@EricBe ....

Any specific hints on how to to import into MFB from LogTen Pro?

I've read the instructions and the FAQ. But since I've did the export of Flights and Aircraft as two different data files, do I do two distinct imports into MFB? Which one goes first?

Or do I need to do a merge via Excel, make sure the headings match your template, and then import?

Done correctly, will I see all the records I had for the individual aircraft and individual people?
 
The iOS currency widget (tested on iPhone and iPad) has a small bug. The little arrow you click on to expand the view (in my case, from the compact view of ASEL and AMEL currency to the full view of all other sorts of currency) begins life pointing down/expanded, with the view not expanded. So I have to tap the arrow once to bring it to compact/right-pointing orientation and then a second time to actually expand the widget view.
 
AggieMike88 said:
@EricBe ....
I've read the instructions and the FAQ. But since I've did the export of Flights and Aircraft as two different data files, do I do two distinct imports into MFB? Which one goes first?
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If the LTP export you have has fields at the top that look like "flight_xxx" and "aircraft_xxx" then you should be able to import things more or less directly. That said, it's not a bad idea to get your aircraft all imported and in order first, since when I import your flights I look at the tail number to match it to an aircraft in y our account. But it's fine if not: I'll see the tail number and if it doesn't match anything in your aircraft list then I'll give you a chance to add it, with a model suggested by the aircraft_type column.

Sims are always the tricky bit; we can take that offline if we want to go deeper on this, but my general suggestion is to:
* Add the sim into your account as appropriate, and note its auto-assigned SIMxxxx pseudo-tailnumber.
* Then edit the corresponding flights in the import file to reference the SIMxxxx tailnumber instead of a more generic "SIM" or "FRASCA" etc.
 
iamtheari said:
The iOS currency widget (tested on iPhone and iPad) has a small bug. The little arrow you click on to expand the view (in my case, from the compact view of ASEL and AMEL currency to the full view of all other sorts of currency) begins life pointing down/expanded, with the view not expanded. So I have to tap the arrow once to bring it to compact/right-pointing orientation and then a second time to actually expand the widget view.
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Huh.. thanks for letting me know. Tracking now at https://github.com/ericberman/MyFlightbookiOS/issues/238
 
EricBe said:
Add the sim into your account as appropriate, and note its auto-assigned SIMxxxx pseudo-tailnumber
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The pseudo tail# is something generated by MFB?

Thanks for the other info.
 
EricBe said:
Perhaps, but what you describe suggests to me using the pause/play functionality. If you do autodetection, you can press the green pause button when you shut down and when you start up again, press play. When auto-total (from engine, flight, or block time) computes your total time at the end of the flight, it will subtract out the paused time.
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I have a different auto detection question for you. This is from a flight today direct from JWY to AQO. I tapped engine start and flight start at JWY, and I forgot to stop it until we'd driven to our destination (not TS46), but it had already auto detected the flight end time correctly. My question is, why does it think I landed at 2 intermediate airports and 1 after the flight ended, and why does it think I had 5 landings, only 1 of which was full-stop?Screenshot_20210425-172835_Gallery.jpg
 
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