Show HN: I'm an airline pilot – I built interactive graphs/globes of my flights

https://jameshard.ing/pilot

ok_computer
Cool visualization for your personal logbook. How is the raw or display data stored?

The globe map reminds me of this hexagonal grid article from my bookmarks I’d found on here or reddit.

https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/

As an airline pilot, I am curious, have you watched the season 2 of Nathan Fielder’s Rehearsal on HBO, that comically addresses the topic of pilot-copilot communication?

If so what are your thoughts on his portrayal of the existence of copilot communication friction. And without intending to dig into your personal business, do you think there is a tendency and survivor (retention) bias for the profession to remain high functioning ______, without recognizing a need for help. Or is this portrayal of stunted coworker dialog an edge case that is amplified from his perspective.

jamesharding
The data is all in a sqlite file from my logbook software! I wrote a little post about extracting the data here: https://jameshard.ing/posts/querying-logten-pilot-logbook-sq...

I have only seen a few clips from The Rehersal (the bit with Sully listening to Evanescence), so I don't have much to go on. Pilot communication is definitely something that we spend a lot of time talking about and training (under the larger banner of CRM - crew resource management), and in my experience the industry is making real efforts to be better in this area!

im_down_w_otp
Hey! I used to work for the company that makes that logbook software. That was a great job. The CEO was an amateur pilot himself and really, really loved software product design.

It's been over a decade, but it's cool to see that software still being iterated on and pilots still loving it.

Even cooler to see someone such as yourself extending its usefulness by leveraging the data. Cheers!

jamesharding
Awesome!

You can tell that the software is created by people passionate about aviation (and also passionate about nice UX, something that most all of the Logten competitors really lack). Do you remember if my guess about using NSDate internally was correct?

ok_computer
Cool, thank you for the response and details.
wetoastfood
> How is the raw or display data stored?

He answered in the post that he uses LogTen Pro[1] which enables querying with SQL[2]. In the SQL post he says the app has an export for CSV but the app stores it in SQLite which you can access and query from directly.

[1] https://logten.com/ [2] https://jameshard.ing/posts/querying-logten-pilot-logbook-sq...

fastball
I assumed the globe was using Uber's H3 library for the hexagons.
bombcar
Reminds me of https://youtu.be/1SKDvQzcasg which is quite old.
voxleone
Very cool. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading through your detailed flight logs — the way you’ve documented your experience, from distances and time in the air to the nuances of roles (P1, P2, PICUS), was fascinating.

As someone concerned with these matters — developing SpinStep, a quaternion-based library for modeling orientation and vector state evolution in physical systems — I found myself unexpectedly inspired by your data. It got me thinking: could these kinds of spatiotemporal logs, with their emphasis on direction, roles, and environmental influences, be approached through something like rotational state modeling?

For example:

.Aircraft headings and orientation changes could map naturally to quaternions.

.Role transitions (e.g. P1 ↔ P2) resemble discrete state changes within a continuous system.

.Wind effects or flight network patterns might even be modeled as external fields influencing orientation over time.

I hadn’t envisioned SpinStep in this context, but your log offered a compelling perspective. Whether or not it leads to something concrete, I just wanted to thank you for the inspiration.

.https://github.com/VoxleOne/SpinStep/blob/main/README.md \

.https://github.com/VoxleOne/SpinStep/blob/main/docs/01-ratio...

jampekka
The repo reads a bit LLM written.

Quaternions have some nice properties for some operations with 3D rotations, but they are not a panacea.

the_arun
Folks like you (expert in multiple domains) are an inspiration for people like me. I always dream to do something other than my day job. Hope I push through my laziness to do it some day !
ProZsolt
Sometimes I wish software development didn’t pay so exceptionally well. I’m interested in so many other things, but it’s hard to justify switching to another full-time field, knowing it would mean a significant pay cut.
bronco21016
Depending on your locale and position, you may have it backwards. Check out pilot pay in the United States at www.airlinepilotcentral.com
BrandoElFollito
I think GP meant some girls outside of software engineering.

I would love to switch (back) to teaching but a 10x pay cut is not doable. Maybe close to retirement I will give it a try.

nimish
I wish I wasn't medically barred from having a pilot's license. Not for the pay, but I just like the idea of flying. Unfortunately, I cannot. I recommend people use their salaries to learn how to fly regardless! It's maybe ~$15-20k to get a PPL which is doable for the tech crowd with some planning.
DC-3
My heart bleeds.
jamesharding
What a kind comment :) Thank you!
sillyfluke
There's an oft-repeated line that goes something like, "I was lucky enough to be terrible at my first job." ie, optionality is a curse.
inoffensivename
I love what you've done with your logbook, but the coolest part of the page was the photo of you on the flight deck with your Dad.

I'm an airline pilot here in the US and it would be the privilege of a lifetime to be able to do that with one of my kids.

jamesharding
It truly has been the career highlight for me! He will be retiring in a few months, so we have the last flight together planned aleady.

Hopefully you will be able to have the same experience with your kids! What fleet are you on currently?

weinzierl
That is beautiful. Besides the globe and the cool animations I like the dashboard that shows summary stats.

This made me think. Either Frauenhofer or Helmholtz in Germany used to have a site where you could enter your specific flights and it would tell you your overall radiation exposure. This was meant mainly for flight personnel and it was not nearly as beautiful. The accumulated exposure would be a useful addition for the dashboard.

jamesharding
A great idea!

The company that I work for does actually provide us with our cumulative dosage data for the month/year/lifetime, but not at such a granular level. Do you know of any statistical way that I could calculate this?

I suppose I could work out the great circle routes and the approximate dosage in that airspace at a given time?

defrost
For any third parties (I'm getting a wee bit old for these diversions) geophysical survey companies (the ones with crop dusters with stingers on their tails, high wing twin props with stingers and wing tips sensors, etc.) have ongoing globally spread about calibration flights for radiometric (environmental ground radiation) surveys.

The surveys are (usually) 200m spaced grid lines 20km (or so) long flown 80m above ground, the calibration flights are stacked lines from quite high up down to ground level so that the post processing can estimate and subtract cosmic radiation "from above" and how it falls off through the current atmosphere (density, humidity, etc. thinning out current gamma inflow from up high).

Such things, if accessed, would fine tune a radiometric exposure by height model in the same way that using the global magnetic model(s) (there are two main ones) can tune up true north magnetic readings .. it's a fine adjustment that only matters to some.

Some working airport that your cross somewhere in the world likely has a hanger full of geophys survey craft (helicopters and planes) .. might be worth chasing up.

mcflubbins
Nomadlist had (has?) radiation exposure for all of your trips too, I was shocked when I saw the stats!
SwiftyBug
Do you travel a lot? Because a trip from east to west coasts of the US expose you to less radiation than an X-Ray exam. Doesn't seem that shocking.
HichamCh
That's a super cool way to visualize your career! Did you use a specific mapping library or build something custom?
zX41ZdbW
I have a similar visualization on top of ~150 billion data points of ADS-B data: https://adsb.exposed/

It is interactive, so you can filter by any dimension, like the types of aircraft you fly.

It is 2D, but I thought about making it 3D as well.

PS. The map you showed is somewhat slow - when I zoom in, the framerate is less than 10.

leeoniya
wow, that's some serious data crunching.

can you share some tech details?

zX41ZdbW
There is the "About" link at the bottom, pointing to the source code:

https://github.com/ClickHouse/adsb.exposed/

In fact, the data processing pipeline is entirely trivial (a one-page shell script), and the frontend is also trivial (a single HTML page with vanilla JavaScript).

ccorcos
You should add time dilation to your list of statistics! You’re probably around 5 microseconds younger than someone who stayed in Earth!
jamesharding
Flying Eastbound across the international date line also kind of counts as going back in time, right?
_dark_matter_
Okay but I commute to work so give me a picosecond back please.
18172828286177
Being a professional pilot while also being able to put together such a polished software project like this is incredibly impressive
barbazoo
It’s not a 9-5 for many and time between flights can be significant. Not surprised they do that as a hobby on the side. Not imagining they’re doing anything during the flight.
shawabawa3
do pilots get to mess around on a laptop while flying? My understanding is that most of a flight is just sitting there waiting for landing to start, could mean a lot of spare time to pick up programming
mbreese
I don’t think the cognitive context switching required would be a good fit. I imagine pilots always have to be “on” just in case something happens, even if they are letting the plane do some of the routine flying.
Rendello
When you're 8 hours deep in borrow checker hell, you're in no emotional state to be piloting the A380.
kunley
Or the contrary: nothing can shake you anymore
perks_12
He graduated from UofT with a major in CompSci.
jakub_g
If you're interested in the subject, let me introduce you to GCMap.

GCMap can plot a line between any two IATA airport codes; actually you can put arbitrary number of pairs comma separated; and best of all, they can be passed as a URL param. For example: `JFK-LHR,LHR-CDG,CDG-FRA`

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=JFK-LHR,LHR-CDG,CDG-FRA

I track my own flights by sending an email to myself with a GCMap URL every now and then.

kccqzy
GCMap doesn't have a whole lot of different map projections to choose from. Having more than one pair on a single map will result in a pretty bad map projection. That's my biggest complaint. They really need to add more better projections such as Mollweide, Winkel Tripel, Robinson, etc. Or they should just have a globe.