You're right, you're right... I'm getting there eventually!
Yet Another Digital Logbook Thread — Except I Built This One
- Thread starter Ian_J
- Start date
🦈💜
Well-Known Member
I do admit, I'm continually surprised that people keep using Windows after all of the gross stuff Microsoft does, and the fact that they can't seem to code their way out of a paper bag. My gaming computer constantly nags me about upgrading to windows 11 every few times I boot into windows. I'm waiting for it to just decide to install without my consent one of these days.
Granted, Linux is pretty frustrating lately, too.
MacOS is sorta the last tolerable desktop I can recommend, unless you're a weird hax0r like me. (posix, *nix, reasonable desktop environment, no vibe coding, support reasonable standards, don't spyware you, don't inject ads into your OS, don't install updates without consent, etc.)
Granted, Linux is pretty frustrating lately, too.
MacOS is sorta the last tolerable desktop I can recommend, unless you're a weird hax0r like me. (posix, *nix, reasonable desktop environment, no vibe coding, support reasonable standards, don't spyware you, don't inject ads into your OS, don't install updates without consent, etc.)
killbilly
Vocals, Lyrics, Triangle, Washboard, Kittens
Ian - not an immediate need, but you might wanna talk to Larry over at FC View. His app - which talks to FLICA for scheduling, has a terrific feature that exports your schedule to LogTenPro.
For me, and everyone else who uses FLICA (which, yes is going away eventually) it means I never have to load anything. When my schedule updates, I just touch the button in FC View that says send to LogTen and everything drops in there. Kind of like what you are doing with CCS.
You might get some user uptake if you can work with Larry to get Flica to export to blue deck.
Oh thank you…. I’ll have to give this a try…
I’ve been using APDL for 15 years which exports logbook stuff to Logbook pro which is what I’ve used for my logbook for the last 25 years.
Well APDL just ate all of the data for my 32-day trip and I lost tail numbers OOOI times and PF/PM/IRP legs for the last trip I was on and I’m finding it hard to get flight times and tail numbers from my airline and I’m too cheap to pay flight radar $2 for tail numbers older than 7 days but less than 30 days ago.
I’m up to date on my electronic logbook in logbook pro for everything except for this trip I’m currently on day 23 of 32. So I’ve lost 23 days worth of flight information that I’m finding very hard to reconstruct…
So that is the last straw for APDL. Plus APDL is 117 only and always flags my flights as illegal.. yeah they’re 117 illegal. But they’re 121 supplemental legal….
Right now I’m writing it down tail numbers and OOOI times in Google Sheets until I figure out a new logbook program
I just downloaded a trial of logten pro. But I’m more pissed about reconstructing my last 22 days of flying… and how useless my airline is in providing access to the info I need to reconstruct it.
I’ve been using APDL for 15 years which exports logbook stuff to Logbook pro which is what I’ve used for my logbook for the last 25 years.
Well APDL just ate all of the data for my 32-day trip and I lost tail numbers OOOI times and PF/PM/IRP legs for the last trip I was on and I’m finding it hard to get flight times and tail numbers from my airline and I’m too cheap to pay flight radar $2 for tail numbers older than 7 days but less than 30 days ago.
I’m up to date on my electronic logbook in logbook pro for everything except for this trip I’m currently on day 23 of 32. So I’ve lost 23 days worth of flight information that I’m finding very hard to reconstruct…
So that is the last straw for APDL. Plus APDL is 117 only and always flags my flights as illegal.. yeah they’re 117 illegal. But they’re 121 supplemental legal….
Right now I’m writing it down tail numbers and OOOI times in Google Sheets until I figure out a new logbook program
I just downloaded a trial of logten pro. But I’m more pissed about reconstructing my last 22 days of flying… and how useless my airline is in providing access to the info I need to reconstruct it.
bike21
9-5 Ruins Lives
Nicely done @Ian_J, seriously! Looks like a very nice UI at first glance, something I'd be very interested in.
As a current LogTen user, I shall keep an eye out for future iOS/Mac versions. Personally, I log each leg during trips via my phone then it syncs to my Mac which I don't use a ton but it's kinda nice having both.
Keep up the good work!
As a current LogTen user, I shall keep an eye out for future iOS/Mac versions. Personally, I log each leg during trips via my phone then it syncs to my Mac which I don't use a ton but it's kinda nice having both.
Keep up the good work!
Yes—and two years is actually the sweet spot. CCS+ keeps roughly two years in its Logbook, and Blue Deck can import the whole CSV in one shot.
Go to CCS+ → Training and Qualifications → Logbook, export the CSV, and import that into Blue Deck. That’ll build most of the logbook and handle the deadheads. Then paste in Flight Time History to fill in the aircraft, seat, flight time and landings. After that, Calendar Sync makes it pretty painless to keep current.
Not quite one click, but a hell of a lot easier than entering two years by hand.
Much appreciated! Thanks!
Edit - yeah thanks to you I just discovered Logten has an API i can plug right into Blue Deck. Much appreciated!
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That sucks, man - I had a similar thing with CrewLounge that motivated me to build this. Yeah, please try the demo and if you find a feature you need I'll build it in just days if it's feasible to do.
It sounds like you actually have two separate issues — reconstructing the 22/23 days APDL lost, and finding something to replace APDL going forward. Blue Deck can definitely be the logbook side of the second problem, but I don't want to oversell the first one. If your airline has any source you can still get for those flights — schedule export, flight history, spreadsheet, PDF, whatever — send me an example and I'll take a look at whether Blue Deck can use it to help reconstruct the trip. If the data simply isn't available from the airline anymore, unfortunately Blue Deck can't recreate information that isn't there.
Going forward, though, if you're already writing the tail numbers and OOOI times into Google Sheets, Blue Deck can import that kind of data, and I'd be interested in seeing what your airline provides because airline-specific import support is exactly the kind of thing I'm building around.
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tlove482
Well-Known Member
I love it. I get tired of having to use my phone for everything.
Sculprit
Well-Known Member
Music to my ears! I’ll give it a go when I get home.
Well I have been looking at what our airline uses… outside of 7 days you are SOL…
There is no FLICA or DECS type access…. There is no integration with FC View app…
Ever since I left yellow and started working here, I had been manually entering my schedule into APDL. But then our schedule changes day to day from what you are awarded so there is no point in preloading anything any duty time apps or logbook apps to check legality.
APDL forces 117 compliance so the duty time function of APDL was pointless since it flagged my schedule as illegal and made it difficult to use because I had to keep overriding all of the notifications that my schedule is illegal.
We can download a PDF of our current schedule… linked is my trip it only has 23 days worth of data. Covering 19Aug to 10SEP. the trip ends on 18SEP. The airline doesn’t know what it’s going to do with me between 10SEP and 18SEP because I am timed out at 116:21 hours on 10SEP. (3:39 flight time remaining)
View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T8PJof17byBZGsgs76TdP-cU2XGe5iUC/view?usp=drivesdk
It has OUT and IN times, it does not have OFF and ON times. It has report times and duty off times. There are no tail numbers. There is an ability to get tail numbers within 7 days of the flight. Using a separate app. From that app I can also get OFF and ON times, but I have to swipe and click to get the specific flight I’m looking for once I know the tail number. There is no way to query by flight number on a specific date to bring up data for the flight. The only way to access the data is to swipe the window left and right until you arrive at the date of flight +/- 7 days of the current date. The swipe up and down to look at all of the tail numbers in the airline to find your specific flight. Then once you find your flight you look to the left of the row to get the tail number, write that down manually, then touch / click on the flight to open the flight details you’ll see crew members and OOOI times.
So that’s all I can do with our airline software. After seven days have passed the only way to get the tail number is to go to an open source site like flight radar or flight aware and pay $2 for a month subscription to go back 30 days and get the tail number from open source data.
So hopefully the PDF helps you find a way to parse our data.
It’s,pretty much you need to record things has it happens otherwise you have no access to anything.
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Yeah, that’s sparse!
I’d be happy to build a parser for this to at least input this available data. Do you already have a demo of Blue Deck so you can check it out when I send out the update?
I’ve been out since Aug 19, I won’t have access to a windows PC until I get back on Sep 18… but probably i won’t even bother trying to do anything other than sleep until maybe Sep 20?
So I don’t think many people from our airline is going to be using anything like this.
Done for next release - a dedicated Kalitta profile. This is the info that can be parsed. I'll also have a dropdown of all your tail #s by aircraft type. You can import the pdf or copy paste it.
And for any of your buddies that want to get to United - it'll have a dedicated report to fill out the flight time portion of the United app.
How does it calculate Night?
Hmm. The KLAX to EDDP flight didn’t calculate XC. Is it because it crossed the Zulu Date from one day to the next?
For a Kalitta schedule import, Blue Deck starts with the planned times provided in the CrewAccess PDF. It uses the UTC Start and End times as OUT and IN while preserving the corresponding local airport times and offsets.
Blue Deck then follows the flight’s approximate route minute by minute and compares the aircraft’s position with the sun using airport coordinates and astronomical data. Any portion flown after evening civil twilight or before morning civil twilight is counted as night. This handles overnight and international flights without being confused by time-zone changes.
Because the schedule does not include actual OFF and ON times, the initial night calculation is an estimate based on the planned OUT-to-IN window. If the pilot later enters more accurate OUT, OFF, ON, or IN times, Blue Deck recalculates using that better information. Actual OUT and IN improve the overall block-time calculation, while actual OFF and ON pinpoint the takeoff, landing, and airborne portion more accurately.
And the XC in the screenshot above is just me still building the features. It calcs it just fine in real life. the screenshot is just behind the scenes behind the dev curtain. Screen shot is what it looks like now.