What changed, and when. Bug fixes are always free.
The 51% bar is visible again. On Tasks & the 51% Rule, the coloured bar showing the split between builder, commercial assistance and kit manufacturer was rendering as nothing at all — the segments were being given their widths correctly but had no height and no colour, so the headline figure of the whole app showed as an empty strip. The percentages underneath it were right throughout; only the bar was invisible. The legend swatches beside it were blank for the same reason, and the 50% marker line was missing.
The fabrication and assembly checklist columns line up. The four credit columns and the task numbers had no column widths or alignment, so the numbers wandered. A task nobody has scored yet is now marked, rather than looking like four empty columns.
Both had the same cause as the build log in 1.1.0: the markup was asking for styling by one set of names while the stylesheet provided another. There is now a check that hunts for exactly this, so a third instance cannot go unnoticed.
Printed documents open the way they do in the other two apps. The builder's log and the fabrication and assembly checklist were being downloaded as files instead of opening in a tab, while every other document in GA Build Helper — and every document in GA MX Helper and GA Wire Helper — opened for you to look at first. They now behave the same, and still fall back to downloading if your browser blocks the new window.
The cause was two different pieces of code doing the same job, which had drifted apart. There is now one, so they cannot.
Your records folder is remembered. This is the important one. If you chose a folder on disk to keep your build log in, GA Build Helper now reopens it the next time you start the app. Before this it did not: the app quietly went back to browser storage while the file in your folder stayed frozen at whatever was last written, so the copy you were relying on silently stopped being updated. If the two copies have drifted apart, the app now tells you which is newer — with both dates — and asks before touching either. A file it cannot read is left exactly as it is.
Because a browser will only reopen a folder after you ask it to, you may see a Reconnect button in Settings on the first start after this update. Until you click it the app says plainly that the folder is not being written to, rather than pretending.
The build log reads like a log. Each entry is now a card across the width of the page with its fields labelled — When, Who, Location, Time and Notes — instead of running together into one line. Entries are in date order, oldest first like a logbook, and you can switch to newest first. A missing who, when or where says "not recorded" rather than disappearing, because AC 20-27G paragraph 7h asks for all three.
Capitals. Typing into the app now produces capitals, as it does in GA MX Helper and GA Wire Helper. Email addresses, licence keys, web addresses and the manual search box are left exactly as typed.
Money reads properly. Costs and totals are grouped in thousands — $46,150.00 rather than $46150.00 — on screen and on every printed sheet.
The manual is searchable. It has seventeen sections and no way to search them until now.
Your kit's own FAA figures. When the kit on your project is one the FAA's National Kit Evaluation Team has evaluated, the manufacturer's-share box now links straight to that kit's own FAA checklist and says where on it the figure is printed. It does not fill the figure in: that number decides your position under AC 20-27G Table 1 and it should come off the FAA's page, not from a guess.
Printed documents now use the same half-inch margin as GA MX Helper's.
First release. A builder's log for an amateur-built aircraft, kept in one file on your own computer. No account, no server, and it works with no internet — which is where most building actually happens.
The log itself. Dated entries with who did the work, when, and where — the three things AC 20-27G paragraph 7h asks a builder's log to show, as fields of their own rather than something you remember to mention in the text. Photographs attach to the entry they belong to. An entry can be marked as inspected, naming who witnessed it, because the FAA performs no in-process inspections and the record you make before something is closed up is the only record there will ever be.
The fabrication and assembly checklist, from the FAA's fixed-wing list, with the major portion arithmetic from AC 20-27G alongside it. Each task is one point, shared between the kit manufacturer, commercial assistance, and your own work. The running total is always in view. It will not tell you that you have met the 51% rule — it shows the arithmetic and names the paragraph, because 14 CFR 21.191(g) leaves that determination to the FAA.
Kit selection from the FAA's own listing. Pick your kit from the published National Kit Evaluation Team list rather than typing a make and model, and the manufacturer's evaluated percentage sets the ceiling the arithmetic works from. Typing it in by hand still works. Choosing from the list needs an internet connection for that moment; everything else does not.
FAA forms, filled in from the project. The forms an amateur-built aircraft needs, each prefilled with what you have already entered and opened as a real PDF you can save and print. Anything calling for a judgement, a certification, or an entry belonging to an FAA representative, designee or notary is deliberately left blank — a signed form is your statement, not the app's.
More than one aeroplane. Each project keeps its own log, tasks, photographs, equipment, weight and balance and Phase I record; nothing crosses between them, because the FAA sees two aircraft as two sets of records. Your own details — name, address, certificates — are shared across everything you build.
Weight and balance, equipment and avionics, recorded as you fit them, so the empty weight report and the equipment list come out of the records you already kept rather than being assembled from memory at the end.
Costing. Purchase tracking with a budget worked out from it, so a spend figure is never entered twice. What you owe and what you are still waiting for are tracked separately, because they are different questions.
Phase I flight testing. The hours, the required manoeuvres and the operating limitations, recorded against the aircraft they belong to.
Printing. Every record prints as a document with your details in the header: the build log, the task checklist, the equipment list, the weight and balance report, the costing summary, the avionics configuration, the project sheet and a summary of the whole build. The Phase I hours appear on the project sheet and the summary.
Handing over to GA MX Helper. Once the aircraft is certificated the record stops being a build log and becomes a maintenance record. Print & Export writes a file GA MX Helper opens as a new aircraft, carrying the airframe, engine and propeller, the airworthiness details and the whole build history — so the build does not get left behind in a different app.
Wiring from GA Wire Helper. A project file exported from GA Wire Helper can be read in, so the wiring you drew there shows up against the aeroplane you are building, and becomes a log entry like any other piece of build work.
Also included: the hardware and torque reference, the unit converter shared with the other two apps, Forms & Regs with the paragraphs this app cites, and the full user manual built in with search.
Your data stays on your computer. Export regularly — a build log is mostly photographs, so it grows, and the app tells you if the browser runs out of room rather than failing quietly.
GA BUILD HELPER