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Auto-Record from ADS-B (Mobile)

The mobile app has a track recorder that captures every flight automatically — no manual start, no remembering to upload at the end. This page explains the pilot's-eye view; the underlying mechanics are detailed in Mobile → Track Recorder.

What you have to do

Step-by-step, the easy version:

  1. Before flight: open the AZSuite mobile app on the phone you'll have in the cockpit. Confirm the app is foregrounded and not just sitting in the app switcher.
  2. In the cockpit: connect the phone to your Stratux / GTX-345 Wi-Fi. The ADS-B Receiver tile should show a green dot.
  3. Take off: when ground speed exceeds 30 kts with a valid GPS fix, the recorder auto-starts. A red ● REC 0:00:14 · 7 pts · 0.4 NM strip appears across the top of the screen.
  4. During flight: nothing — let the strip do its thing. Navigate to the radar, weather, anywhere — recording continues across all tiles.
  5. After landing: keep the app open during taxi. After 60 seconds at under 5 kts, the recorder auto-stops. The strip disappears. The flight appears in the Track Recorder tile's "Recorded Flights" list.

What you have to NOT do

Things that interrupt recording:

  • Background the app — the home button, app switcher, or screen-off for more than ~30 seconds will pause recording (iOS background restriction). The recorder resumes when you bring the app back, but you'll have a gap.
  • Force-quit the app — same.
  • Disconnect from the Stratux Wi-Fi — no GPS source means no recording.
  • Lose battery power — phone dies, recording dies. Have a charger.

Best practice: kneeboard mount

Practical setup:

  • Mount the phone on a kneeboard with expo-keep-awake engaged (the app prevents the screen from sleeping during recording, but you can also lock Auto-Lock to "Never" in iOS settings)
  • Plug it into ship power
  • Open the radar tile or weather tile so you're getting in-flight value

This way the screen stays on, the app stays foregrounded, and recording runs from runup to shutdown.

After the flight

The flight is now in your phone but not in your AZSuite logbook. Two ways to get it there:

Option 1: Upload from the Track Recorder tile

  1. Open the Track Recorder tile (or tap any "● REC" strip from earlier)
  2. Find the just-completed flight at the top of the list
  3. Confirm the auto-detected departure / destination airports look right
  4. Tap ↑ Upload
  5. If the track doesn't already have an aircraft attached, pick one from the modal
  6. Wait a few seconds — status flips to uploaded

The track is now visible in:

  • Your AZSuite web pilot logbook (under "Save and Log Track" on a new entry)
  • The aircraft's track history

Option 2: Bulk-upload later

If you've flown several flights since you last had Wi-Fi, the list shows all of them as pending. Tap upload on each one. Each upload is independent; slow Wi-Fi is fine because the upload is small (a few hundred KB per flight of 1 hr).

Option 3: Skip upload, log manually

If the flight was a sim session or otherwise doesn't belong in your real logbook, long-press → Delete on the row. The local copy is removed and never uploads.

Departure / destination detection

When recording stops, the app picks the nearest airport within 3 NM of the first GPS fix and within 800 ft of the point altitude. Same for the last GPS fix. The result fills the departure_airport / destination_airport fields.

This works ~95% of the time. Failure modes:

  • In-flight start — first sample is at cruise altitude, no airport within 3 NM. Departure detected as null. Fix: set it manually before upload.
  • Grass strip not in OurAirports — most public-use grass strips are in the bundle, but some private fields aren't. Detection finds the wrong airport. Fix: re-detect, or override before upload.
  • Long approach — last sample at 200 ft on final, but the airport's threshold is several thousand feet away horizontally. Usually fine because the recorder runs another minute through taxi (when you're on the ramp, the last sample IS at the airport).

A ↻ Re-detect airports button appears next to any track with a missing detection. It re-runs the lookup using the current bundle.

What you can do with the uploaded track

Once it's in AZSuite (web side):

  • Replay the flight — moving-map playback with altitude / speed timeline
  • Attach to a logbook entry — the entry then shows the track as a thumbnail with a "View Replay" link
  • Compare to engine monitor data — if you also uploaded a JPI dump for the same flight, AZSuite cross-references them on a unified timeline
  • Aircraft history report — uploaded tracks contribute to the aircraft's history report (number of flights, distance, time, etc.)

Fully offline?

Yes. The recorder writes to local SQLite during the flight; nothing goes to AZSuite servers until you tap upload. So:

  • Fly without cell service / over the ocean / wherever — recorder works
  • Upload happens whenever you next have network
  • Upload is small enough (< 500 KB per flight typically) that even cellular / spotty Wi-Fi works fine

Privacy

The track stays on your device until you upload it. After upload, your AZSuite privacy settings control whether the track is private (just you), shared with co-pilots, or visible to anyone with the entry link.