Log your first flight
This tutorial walks you through logging your first flight. By the end, you’ll have a confirmed booking on the calendar, a usage log tied to that booking, and a photo of the meter saved as evidence — a proper record the treasurer can finalise when the month closes. Plan on around ten minutes, give or take, depending on how long you spend lingering on the calendar admiring your weekend.
The only thing you need before you start is to be signed in as a member of a syndicate with at least one aircraft and a confirmed rate. If you’re reading this fresh off Join a syndicate as a member, you’re good.
A note on words: this tutorial says “Hobbs” throughout because that’s the commonest engine meter on GA aircraft. If your syndicate’s admin has set the engine meter label to Tacho (or a custom word), you’ll see that word in the app wherever this tutorial says Hobbs — the flow is identical. The label is configurable on the syndicate’s Billing & Rates screen.
Step 1 — Book the aircraft
Section titled “Step 1 — Book the aircraft”Every usage log lives inside a booking. You can’t log a flight that isn’t tied to a booking, so that’s where we start. Open the syndicate (your default one loads on launch) and tap the Calendar tab.
The calendar opens on the month view by default — a bird’s-eye read of the upcoming month. For booking a specific slot it’s easier to work in the hourly grid, so use the view selector at the top to switch to Week.
Now pick a slot. Saturday afternoon is a fine choice for a first flight. On web, click on the start hour and drag down to the end. On mobile, long-press the start hour and then drag. As you drag, a translucent block follows your finger — that’s your booking-in-waiting.
Release, and the Create Booking dialog opens with your start and end times pre-filled. Have a quick look:
- Asset — the aircraft is picked for you if there’s only one. If there’s more than one, pick the one you actually plan to fly.
- Start Time and End Time — nudge them by fifteen minutes if you need to. Your drag got you close, not exact.
- Pencil in (tentative) — leave this unticked. A tentative booking is a non-binding hold, which is useful when you’re not sure yet; today, you are sure. See Tentative vs confirmed bookings if you’re curious about the distinction.
Tap Create. The dialog closes, a “Booking created successfully” snackbar slides up, and your slot now appears on the calendar as a solid block with your name on it.
That’s the “visible reservation” moment — the slot is yours. If your syndicate requires admin approval for member bookings, the booking will read pending instead of confirmed until an admin signs off, but the rest of this tutorial works exactly the same either way.
Step 2 — Open the booking when you’re ready to fly
Section titled “Step 2 — Open the booking when you’re ready to fly”Fast-forward to the flight itself. Whether you log usage mid-flight, straight after shutdown, or that evening on the sofa, the flow is identical. Open the booking: tap it on the calendar, or find it under the Bookings tab.
The booking detail screen shows you everything about the slot — asset, time, notes — with a Log Usage button near the bottom.
Tap it. The Log Flight form opens with fields for meter readings, landings, a pilot-in-command picker, departure and arrival airfields, and a notes box.
Step 3 — Enter the flight
Section titled “Step 3 — Enter the flight”Work down the form. Don’t be put off by the length — most of the fields are either pre-filled, optional, or trivial.
- Date — today. Back-date it only if the flight happened earlier in the booking window.
- Hobbs Start — the Hobbs reading on the aircraft before you started the engine. Type the number as you’d read it on the drum:
1234.5. - Hobbs End — the reading after shutdown. This must be at least the start value; if you accidentally swap them, the form won’t submit.
- Departure and Arrival — ICAO codes if you have them, free text if you don’t. Leave Arrival blank to signal a return to base.
- Landings — the count. If you did three circuits, that’s three landings.
- Touch & Gos — separate from landings. A go-around isn’t a landing.
- Pilot in Command — pick yourself from the member list, or type a name if the PIC was a guest.
- Notes — anything worth remembering. “Trim runaway on approach” belongs here; it’s also worth reporting as a squawk, but we’ll leave that for another tutorial.
You’ll notice the header of the screen shows a live read-out: “Billed on Hobbs time” and, once you’ve got both meter values in, a computed duration. That’s the charge the treasurer will see when they finalise — no surprises.
Step 4 — Photograph the meter
Section titled “Step 4 — Photograph the meter”Next to each meter field sits a small camera icon labelled Photograph meter. Tap the one next to Hobbs End.
Your device’s camera opens. Line up the Hobbs drum in frame, tap the shutter, confirm. The camera icon next to the meter field swaps to a green tick to confirm the photo is attached and ready to upload when you save. You can tap it again to re-take if the first shot was blurry.
On mobile, Syndik8 reads the Hobbs value off the photo for you and offers to fill the field from the recognised number. On web, the camera step is unavailable — type the reading in by hand and skip this step. If you’re doing this tutorial in a browser at your desk, that’s fine; the photo is evidence, not a data source, and you can still log the flight.
The start-meter photo is optional and isn’t saved — it’s purely a workflow aid, handy if you want to double-check your reading later. The end-meter photo is the one that matters for the ledger.
Step 5 — Save
Section titled “Step 5 — Save”Scroll to the bottom and tap Log Usage. The button reads Log Usage rather than Save throughout the screen; the form is literally logging usage.
You’ll see a “Usage logged successfully” snackbar. The screen closes. You’re back on the booking, and the usage log you just created appears in the booking’s usage list, complete with Hobbs delta and landing count.
What you just did
Section titled “What you just did”- Created a confirmed booking on the calendar.
- Logged usage against that booking, including meter readings, landings, and PIC.
- Attached an end-meter photo as evidence.
- Made the booking eligible for finalisation — an admin or the treasurer can now finalise the charge at month end.
Where to go next
Section titled “Where to go next”- If the next flight has unusual conditions (mid-month fuel top-up, a landing at a non-home airfield with fees), the full field list lives on Usage log fields.
- For the rules behind the meter-photo store — what’s kept, what isn’t, who sees it — see Hobbs and tacho photos.
- For the “why” behind splitting logging from finalisation, see Why finalisation is a separate step.
- If you spotted a defect in flight, the next thing to learn is Report a squawk.