Skyhop

Today Skyhop has received a major update which includes improvements to existing features, and an important new feature which will open the way for future growth.

Starting today it is possible to also log exercises with each flight. This is a feature which will be targeted towards flight schools and the like. Individual users getting started with exercise tracking will keep access to this feature indefinitely!

Also, we're ready to announce a big feature shipping in the upcoming weeks which involves fully automatic flight logging! Though challenging to implement for a small bootstrapper like me, I truly believe this is the best way to bring added value to the users of Skyhop.

Read more details here: https://skyhop.org/blog/exercise-tracking-automatic-flight-logging-and-more-awesomeness.html

Today I have publicly published a demonstration of what I have been working on recently; flight analysis.

I have written an accompanying blog post to describe what's going on there.

As a demonstration I have added my most recent checkride, which I made just before the corona shutdown happened. Check out my flight here!

I would love to hear from you (even non pilots) about what you think about this tool.

In an effort to polish things just a bit more before release I've redone the website (again). The primary excuse this time has been to add a blog, so I can focus a bit more on content marketing.

The first post has already been published, focussing a bit on what's coming. Read it here; https://skyhop.org/2020-04-28/getting-ready-for-departure.html.

While you're at it, feel free to subscribe to our newsletter to stay in the loop on new developments.

Let me know what you think about the website, and please, if you have any pilot friends, ask them whether they want an automatic logbook. 😁

The latest update to Skyhop has been deployed on the 15th of November, 2019. Now, exactly three months later I'm deploying the biggest and trickyest update so far! With 20,000 code changes, a change in deployment pipeline, and newfound inspiration to move on quickly but surely.

So what has changed?

• The API has had some finishing touches (e.g. authorization has properly been implemented, and most endpoints can be properly filtered now)
• New users can actually register themselves now
• We have laid the groundwork for payment processing
• Lots of new documentation
• Some internal architectural changes
• Created some nice email integrations
• Major refactor in a way that will prevent me from accidentally breaking critical components
• Shifting some databases around to improve server utilization

Now that this is out of the way I'll be able to release new versions on a weekly basis with much smaller changes, and without the fear of accidentally breaking critical components. With this complexity out of the way I have found some new motivation as I will be able to move quicker than ever before. Given the plan is to release a v1 in March, this is just the boost I need to take off!

Hey fellow bootstrappers!

There's a lot going on, and while I could focus on product, I'm focusing on developing a better landing experience for my future users.

The proof of concept of this website is currently available at https://skyhop.github.io/website. Please take a look, and let me know what you think.

I believe my point of view on this website is heavily skewed as I've been working on this for about a week now, and hence I would love any fresh views. Regardless of this it definitely is a BIG improvement over the old one, which at the time of writing is still available over at https://skyhop.org.

So there are some things I'm still working on:

• Email signup
• Getting started (how should I design that experience?)
• Properly linking pages
• Improving visuals on the footer
• Implementing some responsive improvements

Any suggestions are appreciated!

Happy hacking!

Over the past period of time SkyHop has progressed to the point where it could possibly be launched. This brings additional challenges with it. Most of the administrative tasks are finished. User registration is in place, the algorithms work beautifully, payment systems work correctly, and there's still a roadmap to work on after launch.

In order to move forward from here I launched the company which will be continuing development on this project: Whaally. It represents the sound one makes when eating a pie and thinking "Really?!! A whale?".

Jokes aside, I had a few options to choose from when it came to naming. Most of it is related to where I want to see this company grow over the upcoming years. It's this moment when I start something new, that I'm already thinking about ending it. What if I would be using my own name in the company's name? Would I be able to sell it than? Though I don't know about that already, I can only imagine that would make it more difficult.

On the other hand I do not want to constraint myself to a specific industry either. I could have named the company just 'SkyHop', but that would not fit my future business plans, where I want to be able to pursue my interests, whatever those are. In this regard SkyHop would just be one of the projects launched from here. Considering this I was looking for something generic, which would be somewhat easy to remember for me.

And that, my friends, is how Whaally came to be.

After roughly three years of on and off development on this side project, a first beta version is finally available. This first version includes the core features which I'm planning on using as basis for further development. This includes automated flight registration (currently only available to aircraft using FLARM), a logbook, detailed flight insights and a some utilities for airfields and flight-schools. Go check out https://skyhop.org for more information on its capabilities!

So what's next? Actually having users working with this platform would be a big motivation for me to try not to break too much. Practically this means I will move from a bi-monthly release cycle to a daily release cycle in which I try to continuously ship small improvements, for direct feedback.

For me personally this is a really big step. It means that I have finally built a product about which I am confident enough to put it out there.

While I have no idea about the future progress on SkyHop, I know I will be focusing on feedback for the coming period. I'm really excited to receive feedback on this project, and to use it to evolve this project further.

This is not a milestone, nor a goal, but merely a tragic reminder of reality.

Today the sad news has reached me that two fellow members of our gliding club have been involved in a fatal accident.

Preliminary analysis of the information currently available about the accident tells us that emergency services were only notified around sunset, which is the latest time by which the aircraft was expected to be back at the airfield. News sources confirmed the crash site was only 5 kilometers (or 3 miles) from the airfield.

It strikes me that it must have taken several hours before emergency services have been notified about a missing aircraft. This leaves me wondering whether it would have made a difference if search and rescue operations were notified any sooner.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the survivability of glider crashes are quite reasonable. An example of this is available in this video on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y3Wdt23tCo). To my very surprise only minor injuries were sustained in that crash.

SkyHop is a product which has come forth from the competition between me and my brother when it came to flying glider aircraft. Combine this with the aim to be as lazy as possible, and there's my inspiration to build a system which automatically collects flight data, and processes this through an analysis pipeline in order to compare performance statistics. However, what would happen when this information is used to develop a product which provides digital flight following services, notifying a contact when it looks like a flight went missing or crashed? Would it save lives? Would it have mattered in this tragic case?

I am committed to building a system which is going to do this. Even if it saves just one life, it would be totally worth it!

Never could I have expected this to happen so close to me, and so sudden, and my thoughts go out to their family and friends who have to deal with this tragic loss.

Usually the public website is one of the first things to be published. Not in this project! After a development effort of roughly three years I am finally about to release a private beta for this project.

The progress on this project is slow, the scope too big, and the technical challenges too complex, but we're getting there! I believe it is possible, people are interested in the product, and maybe most importantly, I would love to use it myself.

Right now the focus is on smoothing some things up in order to be able to put SkyHop in it's first private beta stage! Stay tuned for more!