Graphical User Interface

Overview

This is a simple, cross platform Tk based GUI front end. It relies on Python’s tkinter module, which is normally installed by default with the Python interpreter. Some Linux distributions don’t install this module by default, so it may need to be installed with your package manager if you wish to use the GUI. For example, Debian and Ubuntu require:

$ sudo apt install python3-tk

The program accepts either a vertical AIMS “Crew Schedule” or an AIMS “Pilot LogBook report“ as input. These are available from the AIMS web interface at https://ezy-crew.aims.aero.

The “Crew Schedule” should generally be preferred since it includes accurate duty times, full crew, and non-flying duties. It does, unfortunately, lack details of the aircraft registration, including only the aircraft type, and data can only be downloaded in chunks of up to 31 days. To download it, go to Crew Schedule | My Schedule, select the required period, then click the Print button. The viewer that appears has an Export To button on its taskbar. Click this and select HTML.

The “Pilot Logbook report” can be downloaded in chunks of up to two years, and includes the aircraft registrations. Since it doesn’t include actual report and off duty times, these are approximated based on standard report and debrief times when using this input. To download it, go to Reports | Pilot LogBook report, set the required period and click Go. Again, the viewer has an Export To button, from which you should select HTML.

The control bar on the left has radio buttons to select the output type. If you select “Roster (.ics)”, you additionally have the option to include all day events such as days off.

Use the “Load Roster” button to choose the roster to convert. The output will appear in a simple text editor on the right.

Once you are happy with the output, either save it with the “Save” button or copy it to the system clipboard with “Copy All”. If text is selected in the text editor, this button changes to “Copy Selected” to allow parts of the output to be copied.

Output Formats

electronic Flight Journal (eFJ)

This is a text file based scheme for efficiently managing your flying logbook. Details of the scheme and tools for working with it can be found at https://hursts.org.uk/efjtkdocs.

iCalendar

iCalendar files are the standard way to transfer calendar data. This output can be imported into Google Calendar, Outlook etc.

Each entry has an identifier built from the start time of the duty and a list of airports involved or, for all day events, the date and description of the duty. This means that re-uploading an iCalendar file should update your calendar correctly; there is, however, no mechanism for removing entries that have been deleted from your roster since the last upload, so this will have to be done manually.

CSV

A Comma Separated Values (CSV) file with Excel conventions. This can be used as a basis for getting data in to a spreadsheet based logbook — all mainstream spreadsheets are capable of importing these CSV files.