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Gone flying/Done flying texts

tsneidin

Well Known Member
As a courtesy to my girlfriend I send a text when I am done flying so she knows I'm on the ground safely. Not that long ago I forgot ... and I had her niece on board, which caused some stress and worry especially since it was after dark. After that I searched for and found an Android utility that will prevent that from happening again.

The app is named Automate, I have no affiliation, I just found it to be the easiest the automation tools I tried. The 'flow' is always running on my phone and does not cause any significant battery drain or adverse affects. It waits in the background for my planes Bluetooth to connect to my phone. Once the connection is made it checks to see if it already sent a text, if so it sleeps 2 minutes and checks again. If not already 'flying' the tool will acquire my gps location, set a variable 'flying' to true and send a preformated text with my location to a predetermined number. When the Bluetooth connection is no longer Automate sets the 'flying' variable to false and sends done flying text.



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Nifty Idea. But with one caveat: Not really sure I'd want to have a "done flying, all good" text sent if I was to crash my airplane somewhere -- and I think there's a real possibility of that in this design. I once (accidentally) dropped my iPhone from 3500 feet AGL, and it survived without a scratch other than on one corner of the case. I found it in a farmer's field later that day using Find My iPhone, and it was doing quite well and transmitting away.
 
Flightaware Alert

I have a free basic account at Flightaware and get their email Alerts when I takeoff or land. I have a filter in gmail that forwards it to my wife. Easy.
 
When the Bluetooth connection is no longer Automate sets the 'flying' variable to false and sends done flying text.
That's pretty cool, but it looks to be completely reliant on the bluetooth connection? IF that's the case and your audio panel goes TU, it will send the message even though you are airborne with comm problems?
 
So maybe instead of automatically sending the text, send a reminder to send the text yourself.

My wife generally gets, "Back on the ground, did not die" from me after I park.
 
So maybe instead of automatically sending the text, send a reminder to send the text yourself.

My wife generally gets, "Back on the ground, did not die" from me after I park.

Mine is similar, often abbreviated. ?Done flying. Not Dead.?

:D
 
My wife just figures no news is good news. She knows I'm home when she hears the airplane on the driveway, or I come in the house.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by greghughespdx View Post
I once (accidentally) dropped my iPhone from 3500 feet AGL

I wanna hear the rest of that story!! :D

I know I'll regret posting these, and this is straying wayyy off topic, but... This was a year before I worked at Van's. I will own the Cherokee and fly it a little now and then. Need to sell it.

Original post:
https://www.facebook.com/greghughespdx/posts/10156932138049572

And the live-stream finding it:
https://www.facebook.com/greghughespdx/videos/10156934553874572/

It did safely land, though. :)
 
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