Flying Rhino
RHINO AVIATION

Preflight Planning

Dashboard

The dashboard is the landing page after sign-in. It provides the high-level entry points into the working pages.

Aircraft Types

  • Use this page to view an aircraft type, not a specific airplane. Users with the relevant permission may also create or modify types.
  • When you may view but not modify a type, the list provides a View action and the details form is read-only.
  • Set the aircraft-type identifiers, weights, W&B envelope, V-speeds, and bucket structure here.
  • The Buckets and Anchors area controls where the bucket anchor and label appear on the planview.
  • Use Upload Planview in Buckets and Anchors to choose a custom planview image for the type.
  • Planview uploads must be PNG images, with a maximum file size of 3 MB.
  • The uploaded planview is not stored until Save Type or Create Type succeeds.
  • Replacing a planview preserves existing bucket anchors and labels; adjust their positions after saving if the new image geometry differs.
  • Drag the red anchor marker to move the bucket anchor.
  • Drag the bucket label box to move the label location.
  • Anchor X/Y and Label X/Y Pos may also be edited numerically.
  • Deleting a bucket is blocked when the bucket is in use by saved flights or the active W&B loading.
  • The Performance Profiles card lists runway-performance profiles currently attached to the type.
  • Use the “Use hard-coded legacy M20K runway performance” checkbox only for aircraft types that should continue using the built-in M20K profile when no imported table profile is available.
  • Use Parse Performance PDF to upload a tabular performance-profile PDF and choose the parser family. Cessna-style and Cirrus-style parsing are currently enabled.
  • Cessna-style imports derive normal-technique tables from short-field source tables. When the aircraft type has the needed V-speeds, the import uses speed-based conversion from the short-field speeds in the PDF and the type’s selected V-speed set; otherwise it falls back to the configured generic multipliers.
  • Cirrus-style imports derive reduced-weight 2900 lb landing tables from the published 3600 lb landing tables.
  • The import preview shows editable derived normal-technique tables. You can edit notes, names, weights, table cells, and wind-adjustment settings before importing.
  • Wind adjustments are entered as headwind and tailwind percentage-per-knot rules. Disable a line when the source data already includes that wind effect.
  • Performance PDF imports are limited to 5 MB. Existing graph profiles are preserved when importing table profiles.
  • If multiple Cirrus landing profiles are imported, the Flight page currently uses the Flaps 100% landing profile explicitly.
  • If no imported table profile is available, runway performance is shown as unavailable unless that legacy M20K checkbox is enabled for the type.
  • The server must have pdftotext available for PDF parsing. If parsing fails, the type data already saved on the page is not changed.

Aircraft

  • Use this page to view an individual aircraft registration from an aircraft type. Users with the relevant permission may also create or modify aircraft.
  • When you may view but not modify an aircraft, the list provides a View action and the details form is read-only.
  • Select the aircraft type first.
  • Enter the aircraft-specific empty weight and empty CG values.
  • Select the default form template for that aircraft if applicable.
  • Privacy controls determine whether the aircraft is visible only to the owner/admin or to all normal users.

Passengers

  • Create reusable passenger records here.
  • These records may then be selected in W&B instead of retyping the same people repeatedly.
  • Passenger records may be marked private.

W&B

  • Select the aircraft you are loading.
  • Enter or select occupant/load data in the Aircraft Loading card.
  • The planview is display-only on this page. It shows bucket locations and leader lines, but does not edit them.
  • The Loading Summary card shows calculated weights and envelope placement.
  • Warnings appear if a saved loading is no longer valid under the current aircraft-type bucket limits.

Flight

  • Use the top-row buttons to save, save as, open, delete, create a new flight, or generate the form.
  • Enter the aircraft, route, ETD, ETE, optional alternates, and optional runway overrides in the Flight card.
  • Use Route Mode to switch between Single-Leg and Multi-Leg. Single-Leg to Multi-Leg preserves Departure, Destination, and Alternate while dropping Departure Alternate; Multi-Leg to Single-Leg keeps Departure, Destination, and Alternate in the Single-Leg view while preserving intermediate stops for a later switch back to Multi-Leg.
  • ETE and ground-time fields accept h:mm, h:m, :m, :mm, 0h5, 0h05, decimal hours such as 3.5, or whole minutes such as 12. Submitted values are normalized to forms such as 1h32 and 0h10.
  • The Multi-Leg page accepts RWYS as arrival/departure at stops. Separators may be slash, hyphen, en dash, em dash, non-breaking hyphen, whitespace, semicolon, colon, or plus; repeated separators are accepted.
  • In Multi-Leg RWYS, one runway without a separator applies to both arrival and departure. A trailing separator means arrival only; a leading separator means departure only.
  • Use Refresh Weather after changing route, timing, aircraft, or override choices.
  • Review the Weather and Runway Performance cards after refresh.
  • Admin Preferences may contain optional personal limits for ceiling, visibility, wind speed, crosswind component, and gust factor. An available weather value beyond its configured limit is shown in red.
  • Generate Form uses the selected template, target, and current flight/W&B state.

Airports

  • Use the Airports menu item for airport reference lookup and airport-data overrides.
  • Search by exact ICAO, IATA, FAA LID, airport ident, or internal airport ID.
  • Search by airport name or city using % or * as wildcards; wildcards are not applied to identifier searches.
  • If multiple airports match, the page lists abbreviated identifier, location, and name data. Select the airport ident to open full detail.
  • The detail view shows identifiers, location, magnetic variation, elevation, timezone, public/private and tower status, traffic pattern altitude, calm/preferred runway information, communications frequencies with source, remarks, and hours, and runway-end details.
  • Airport, traffic-pattern, communications, operations, and runway override data are merged into the detail view. Private overrides owned by the signed-in user take precedence over global overrides; the newest active row wins within the same scope.
  • Use Override, or Private Override and Global Override when permitted, to edit traffic pattern altitude, calm/preferred runway, runway traffic side, communications frequencies, and communications hours. Overridden values show an information glyph with the override source and base data.
  • Runway information can be sorted longest-to-shortest, shortest-to-longest, or by runway number. Changing the sort order reorders the displayed runways immediately and is remembered for the signed-in user on that browser.

Templates

  • Upload a new RTF or DOCX template from disk.
  • Templates must be `.rtf` or plain `.docx` files. DOCX uploads require the server-side LibreOffice converter.
  • Generated flight forms can target RTF, DOCX, or PDF when the corresponding server-side converter support is available. Ordinary PDF output uses the TextEdit/RTF template layout by default before LibreOffice conversion; the PDF-token target is available for templates that need PDF-specific conditionals.
  • View template thumbnails for page 1.
  • Rename, replace, disable, or restore a template if you own it or are an admin.
  • Disabled templates remain visible on this page to the owner/admin, but do not appear in normal flight form generation choices.
  • Blank True and Blank False generate review copies with data-bearing tokens blanked and conditionals forced true or false.
  • Download Source downloads the stored template source itself when available, not a rendered flight form.
  • See Template Authoring Guide for token names, target tokens, date tokens, and conditional syntax.

Admin

There are two types of admin pages: one for the individual user, and a set for the system administrator. The user's page allows for changing your password, setting your weight, default aircraft, single-leg and multi-leg favorite templates, VFR and IFR personal flight minima, color theme, and output date format.

The system administrator's Admin pages add system management functions. They include user, role, fuel, system-notice, and configuration administration.