VFR Time lets you easily calculate the durations for your flight logbooks. Calculate block time, airborne time and tacho as hours/minutes and decimal time. It’s a simple app but if you’re anything like me, a post-flight brain deserves a little help.
Usage is easy, just input tacho out/in as a regular number, with or without decimals and the rest of the fields as hour and minute with four digits (hhmm).
The tachometer measures engine revolutions and is often used as a basis for charging for aircraft rental. Tacho out is what the timer displays before the engine is started and tacho in is whats displayed after the engine is stopped. "Tacho time" is the duration between the “check out” value and “check in” value.Read more about tach time on wikipedia
The off block time is the the time an aircraft begins to roll with the intention to fly and the on block time is when the aircraft comes to a stop at the parking after a flight. The word block refers to the wheel stop blocks (I think). "Block time" is the duration between off block and on block and is displayed as hours and minutes and decimal time.
Take off is the time the wheels lift from the ground and landing is the time when the airplane touch the ground again after a flight. However, practically, mostly this time is taken just before applying full power when starting and when coming to a stop after landing on the runway. "Airborne time" is the duration between take off and landing and is displayed as hours and minutes and decimal time.
You can easily switch between 12 ans 24 hour clock in the settings. Since we do not want to bother with dates or entering AM/PM the 12 hour clock can only display durations up to 11 hours and 59 minutes where the 24 hour clock manages a whopping 23 hours and 59 minutes.
It’s not really necessary as this app is about the duration, not the actual time of the day. Also, the number keyboard on the iPhone can not be customized, it only supports digits 0-9 and an optional decimal sign so an AM/PM toggle can't be added there. And using the "slot machine" time picker as used in the calander is much slower than using the number pad.
Well, It could be made technically. But that introduces all sorts of usability issues. Does typing “11” and mean 11:00 AM or 11 minutes over the current hour. That kind of flexibility probably would require reading a manual (which nobody would read anyway). Typing two extra digits doesn’t take a lot of time.
That’s because you entered an invalid time. Valid time ranges from 00:00 to 11:59 or 23:59 depending on if you use 12 or 24 hour clock.
That’s because one or both of the timestamps are incorrect. There should be some red input fields too. If not, you found a bug which you are welcome to report to [email protected]
It is...
Double tap a time field to enter the current time in UTC.
If you fly legs longer than a day we are all in envy of you. If you need legs over 12 hours, use 24 hour clock found in settings.
Maybe, as a different app though. This app came to be as a quick and simple tool to calculate the durations to log in different systems and books and will stay like that.
This ventures into the log book realms, and while it's a good idea, is beyond the scope of this app.
Questions and feedback kindly accepted here: [email protected]
Fly safe!