TCA online flight reporter

User manual

v1.3

Introduction

Welcome to the new TCA online flight reporter (OFR). With the OFR you can easily find TCA routes and choose them for a later report. You can search through the TCA routes database, see your monthly assignments and special operations.

You can easily report your flights with online accounting. And you might be able to spend your earned money there in the future.

Get to the OFR

You can access the OFR under http://www.tradewind.org/ofr/ 

To request a password for the OFR, You have to fill out the form under "Request Login". A password will be sent to Your email address.

Login to the OFR using your TCA number and your password which should be sent to you by email already. 

You will see a menu with the options shown below.

Home

This will take you back to the TCA main page.

MyRoutes

That’s your main view. Here you see your reported and unreported flights. The monthly assignments will also appear under “Assigned and unreported flights”

Assigned and unreported flights

Show displays the flightplan of your flight.
Delete removes the flight from your list.
Report will report this flight to the TCA office. Some of the fields are already prefilled with data. You can add or modify the fields according to your flight. Once the “report” button is pressed, the flight is reported and credited to your TCA account. It will appear under

Reported flights	

All reported flights will show up here. Watch the bottom line. This line will show your callsign, flight hours, credits and your TCA number.
Show shows a more detailed view of your reported flight.
Delete rolls back your payment and puts the flight to “assigned and unreported flights”.

Find new route

All routes in the database are displayed here. You can narrow your search by putting a search criteria into the field(s) left of the “search” button. The filter works like a “find a route where X is in the field”. E.g. if you put a “TN”  in the departure field, routes with TNCC, TNCA, TNCC and TNCM are displayed. If you click on the departure or arrival airport you will get all connections flights. E.g. you click on Departure of a route that has TNCC as departure, you will get a list of flights that have TNCC as arrival.
Show will show the flightplan in a new window and 
Choose will make this route show up in the “assigned and unreported flights” list. 
If the search result is longer than the maximum number of lines on your profile, you can flip pages with the “prev page” and “next page” buttons.

If you want to report a flight that is not in the routes database, you should use route “0000” where you can report any airport as departure and arrival.

Individual Report

That’s a shortcut for the lazy ones (like me) to report a flight that’s not in the database. It combines the selection of route “0000” and the immediate report of this route.

MyProfile

Here you can change your personal settings. 
Name and Surname I assume you know what to put here.
Callsign is (surprise) a free to choose nickname.
Email is very important, all Info is sent to this email. Keep it up to date!
Password/Confirm Password changes your (again surprise) password for the OFR.
Country is the country you are living in.
Lines per page is the number of entries displayed on the “find new route” page.

Important: Change Your password and if needed correct Your email address.

Logout

Logs you out of the OFR. 

Email interface

If you report your flights with the TCA offline reporter by email, send the reports to ofr@tradewind.org instead of to thestuff@. You should get a response within 60 minutes. Make sure that you put your TCA number in the callsign field (I know that’s confusing because you have in the OFR TCA number and a callsign which are not equal). If you report an individual flight, make sure you put the airport ID into the departure and arrival field. Successfully reported flights will result in a confirmation email. You will find these flights in the “myroutes” list afterwards. 

Sample:
Flight  : TL1234
Report #: REP12345.TXT
Date    : 2008/1/16
Name    : Carsten Truckenbrodt
Callsign: Aleric
TCA#    : 2963
EMail   : carsten@truckenbrodt.de
# Aboard: 3
VFR/IFR : IFR
Aircraft: Beechcraft B1900C
Depart. : TBPB
Destin. : TGPY
Dep.time: 21:16
Enroute : 00:46
Fuel    :  4333
Route1  : TBPB – KMIA - TGPY.
Route2  : N.A.
Speed   : 220
Altitude: 120
Remark 1:

Footnote
The OFR has been tested with the following browsers: Opera >7.x, Firefox >1.0, Safari > 1.0 Internet Explorer > 5.0. You have to allow cookies to login into and use the OFR. 

Please send any comments or problems or wishes to 
carsten@truckenbrodt.de