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 View/Edit action opens the type details form in read-only mode.
  • 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 includes download links for all aircraft-type data or specific sections: basic type data, V-speeds, W&B data, planview, runway performance, and fuel performance. Downloads are JSON exports for review, backup, external analysis, or later re-import.
  • Users who can create aircraft types may import a full aircraft-type JSON export as a new type. Users who can modify a selected type may update that type from a JSON export; only sections present in the JSON are replaced.
  • The Performance Profiles card lists runway-performance profiles currently attached to the type.
  • When fuel-use performance data has been entered for a type, the Performance Profiles card also lists the active climb/cruise fuel profile used for Flight-page fuel estimates.
  • 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.
  • Fuel-use performance profiles may be entered directly in the Fuel Performance Profile section. One climb row means constant climb performance; multiple climb rows use altitude-based piecewise integration. One or more cruise rows provide percent-power fuel flow. Descent rows are optional and use percent power, descent rate, and fuel flow.
  • Fuel profile workbook upload accepts an .xlsx file with Climb and Cruise sheets and an optional Descent sheet. Uploading a workbook creates a new active fuel profile for the type. Fuel units may be supplied in a Profile, Metadata, or Settings sheet, or inferred from unit-specific fuel-flow headers such as GPH, PPH, kg/hr, or L/hr.
  • 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 View/Edit action opens the aircraft details form in read-only mode.
  • 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.
  • Use the search box to find passengers by any text in the visible passenger record. The % and * wildcards both match any sequence of characters.

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, payload, remaining limiting capacity, and envelope placement.
  • If the Flight page has produced fuel estimates for the selected aircraft, blank or zero Fuel Used and Alt Fuel entries are filled from those estimates when you open W&B. If existing W&B fuel values differ materially from the Flight estimate, W&B asks whether to keep W&B or use the Flight values.
  • 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, optional runway overrides, and optional cruise altitude and cruise percent power in the Flight card.
  • Single-leg flights may use Cruise Alt and Cruise % Power for approximate fuel estimates when the aircraft type has complete climb and cruise fuel-performance data. Multi-leg flights do not use these fields.
  • Cruise altitude accepts feet MSL, comma-separated feet, three-digit hundreds of feet such as 075, or flight levels such as FL180.
  • The page warns when the cruise altitude is invalid, inconsistent with the selected VFR/IFR flight type, at or above FL180 while VFR, or not appropriate for the route direction under the hemispheric rule.
  • 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.
  • When fuel estimates are available, the Flight page rounds estimated trip fuel and alternate fuel up to the next whole unit, then applies the same capacity and reserve checks used by W&B.
  • 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.