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Offline Behavior

The mobile app is designed to work without a network. This page explains exactly what works offline, what doesn't, and what happens when you reconnect.

Fully offline

These features work with no network at all:

  • Pilot logbook — view, add, edit entries
  • Flight log — same
  • Aircraft list / detail / photos (cached)
  • Squawks — view, create, edit (sync when online)
  • Inspections — view stoplight + per-aircraft due-dates (cached)
  • Reservations — view next 30 days (cached)
  • Weight & balance — fully offline; no network needed for the calculator
  • Checklists — fully offline
  • ADS-B Receiver — works on the local Wi-Fi between your phone and the Stratux / GTX-345; no internet needed
  • Radar scope — same
  • FIS-B weather — works as long as the receiver is producing uplinks
  • NEXRAD overlay — same
  • Track recorder — completely offline; tracks queue for upload when network returns
  • Airport lookup — bundled 16,201 US airports, fully local

Queues for sync (offline-tolerant)

These work offline but eventually need a sync round-trip:

  • New squawks with photos — captured offline, queue and upload at sync
  • New logbook entries — same
  • Track-recorder uploads — flights queue locally; upload when ready

Network required

These flat-out need an internet connection:

  • Login / registration — initial auth requires a server round-trip
  • Engine monitor charts — too much data to pre-cache
  • PDF documents — opened on demand
  • Aircraft history report — generated server-side
  • OCR scan upload — Scan Plus uploads to the AZSuite queue
  • Push notifications — obviously

What "online" means

The sync engine considers you online if it can reach alpha-zulu-suite.com. That's a stricter test than just "Wi-Fi connected" — many hangars have Wi-Fi that's connected but doesn't actually route to the internet.

When you're online but the server is unreachable (rare), local features keep working as if you were offline; uploads queue.

Sync rhythm

When the app is foregrounded:

  • Pull: every ~15 minutes (lazy, not on a strict schedule)
  • Push: every ~5 minutes if there are pending changes
  • On-demand: pull-to-refresh on any list view

When the app is backgrounded:

  • iOS: brief background-fetch windows ~hourly, OS-throttled
  • Android: similar, with slightly more leniency

So if you've been offline for an hour and reconnect, expect changes to show up within ~5 minutes. Force a full sync via Sync → Pull if you can't wait.

Going offline mid-flight

The realistic scenario: you're flying, the app is foregrounded with the radar visible, you have no cell service.

  • ADS-B / radar / weather — keep working (fed by Stratux on local Wi-Fi)
  • Track recorder — keeps recording to local SQLite
  • Logbook entry started before takeoff — saves locally, queues for upload
  • Pull-to-refresh on a list — fails silently, list shows the last cached state

When you land and reconnect, the queue uploads automatically.

Recovering from a stuck queue

Very rarely a sync attempt gets stuck (e.g., a squawk photo that's malformed, a logbook entry that fails server validation). The Sync screen shows pending items + their last error.

To recover:

  1. Sync tile
  2. Tap a stuck item to see the error
  3. Either fix the underlying record (edit it) or delete the queued item
  4. Sync resumes from the next item

Storage limits

Local storage caps:

  • Logbook entries: 12 months by default; configure to "all time" if you need it
  • Track-recorder buffer: no hard cap, but warns at 50 unuploaded flights
  • Photos pending upload: 100 MB total; warns when approaching
  • Cached aircraft photos: most-recent 200 MB

If a cap is hit, the app prompts you to upload pending data or expand the cap in settings. No data is silently deleted.