Recent changes

• Some aircraft appeared at another aircraft's position on the tracking map. Trackers that don't report a FLARM identifier were all being treated as though they shared one, so they were shown stacked on top of each other at whichever of them reported most recently — on one day in early August, eight aircraft were drawn at a ninth aircraft's position, with its altitude. Each aircraft is now placed and labelled from its own reports. This was most visible in summer, when more of these trackers are in the air.
• Aircraft without a competition number showed a blank label on the map. The map label fell back to nothing at all instead of the aircraft's registration. It now shows the registration.
• Direction of travel was reported wrongly. Where an aircraft's tracker doesn't send a heading, the site works one out from where the aircraft has just been — and it had the direction mirrored, showing east as west and west as east. The heading shown when you select a point on a flight is now correct.
• Positions that identify no aircraft are no longer shown. A tracker reporting neither a registration nor a device identifier used to be drawn as a single unnamed marker, merging several unrelated aircraft into one. There is no way to tell whose position it is, so it is no longer placed on the map.
• FLARM positions stopped arriving for a minute at a time. The service that feeds FLARM positions into the site shut down whenever a tracker sent a position with no speed, heading or altitude, and took a minute to come back — long enough to leave a hole in an aircraft's trace. When it happened at the start of a new day it could stay down much longer, until a different kind of tracker reported and set the day up for it, so an early morning's FLARM flying could be missing altogether. Once the fix is installed on the server, a report that can't be stored is skipped on its own and the feed keeps running.
• FLARM positions were recorded east of where they were reported. An extra digit was being added to every longitude as it was saved. For most positions the error was under a metre, but for one that happened to land on a round number it reached about 800 m — and for the rare position on an exact whole degree of longitude the result wasn't a place on the map at all. Positions recorded once the fix is installed on the server are correct; it does not go back and repair traces already stored.
• The tracking day list repeated dates and left recent days out. The list of days you can pick from on the tracking map shows the 14 most recent, but some days had been recorded more than once — so a date could appear twice or more in the list, and each repeat pushed a real flying day off the bottom. Recently three of the fourteen were duplicates. The duplicates have been cleared out, and a day can now only be recorded once.
• An aircraft's trace could shuffle between map refreshes. When two of an aircraft's trackers reported in the same second, the order of those points wasn't settled, so parts of a trace could be drawn slightly differently each time the map updated. The order is now fixed.
• Contest admins can now create events. Anyone with the Contest Admin role has always been able to edit every event on the site, but the Add Event button never appeared for them — so a contest admin who wasn't also a club member or a GNZ admin had no way to set one up. The button is now offered to contest admins as well.
• Adding the same event twice could leave a copy you couldn't delete. If two attempts to create an event overlapped, both could end up with the same web address — and because only one of them can be opened at that address, the other had no page, and so no Delete Event button. Duplicate addresses can no longer be stored, and each event now gets its own.
• Repeat events no longer get next year's date in their web address. A second event with the same name and month used to be given an address ending in the following year — a November 2026 event appearing at …-nov-2027. Repeats are now numbered (…-nov-2026-2, -3, and so on), and a third repeat works, which it previously didn't.
• Two awards were showing the wrong badge picture. "Contest Win" was showing the Nationals Win badge, and the First Competition Award was showing the picture belonging to "First Contest" — a separate, informal award with a similar name. Both now show their own. The two awards had been sharing a name behind the scenes with the other award, which is what caused it.
• Some tick boxes didn't look ticked. The End Date box on the Add Event form, and Search Members of All Clubs on the roster editor, were drawn as wide rounded rectangles that looked exactly the same whether or not they were ticked — so there was no way to tell what you'd selected. They now show as ordinary tick boxes.
• Switching day on the tracking map left the previous day's aircraft on screen. If you had an aircraft selected and then picked a different day, its highlighted trace and detail panel stayed on the map showing the previous day's flight — one line drawn between the two days — and the "Loading…" spinner in the top corner could get stuck for the rest of the session. Switching day now clears the selection cleanly, and the spinner turns off as soon as the request finishes or is cancelled.
• A handful of active members were hidden from the member-lookup API. Apps that look a pilot up by their NZGA number — the GNZ Launch app is one — got a "not found" for eight otherwise-active members whose record had never been given a membership type. Those members are now returned like any other active pilot.
• The achievements editor no longer offers badges a pilot already holds. When adding an achievement, the badge menu listed every badge — including ones already awarded, where adding it again did nothing. It now shows only the badges the pilot doesn't yet hold.
• Member names with macrons or other accented letters could be cut short when saved. A name like "Tāmaki" could lose everything from the accented letter onward. Names are now saved in full. If your name was shortened before this fix, please check your profile and re-enter it.

• Two-factor login now recognises trusted devices straight away when you open the site from a link in an email, a bookmark, or a search result. Previously the "remember this device for 30 days" wasn't applied on that first visit, so you'd see an unexpected verification prompt — and clicking Send a new code would then let you straight in, which was confusing.
• The Flying Days calendar (and the club admin's Edit Flying Days screen) could come up empty even when days were scheduled, because the data behind it failed to load. It now loads correctly.
• The Events page's Calendar view now shows event badges on the right days again — previously events could be missing from the calendar even though they appeared in the list and summary views.
• The Events calendar no longer scrolls sideways on phones — the month grid now fits narrow screens instead of overflowing off the edge.
• Searching the members list no longer shows the wrong results while you type. On a slow connection the list could briefly jump to results for an earlier, half-typed search; it now always settles on what you actually typed, and searches while you type more smoothly.
• The members export (CSV/Excel) had its last two columns swapped: the observer_number column showed the tow-pilot flag and the rating_tow_pilot column showed the observer number. Each column now holds the right data.

• Fixed help-documentation images sometimes appearing wider than the screen on mobile devices. This happened when a phone's browser held onto an outdated copy of the site's styling; the site now refreshes its styling automatically whenever it changes, so updates take effect straight away.
• Fixed a server error that could occur when the BTraced phone app sent a tracking update with an unexpected or empty message. These updates are now handled gracefully instead of failing.

The list of New Zealand clubs on the gliding.net.nz homepage had silently disappeared a few weeks ago and was no longer visible to visitors. It is now restored.

Some members were receiving "logged in from a new device" emails on every login, even though they hadn't changed devices. This was caused by mobile networks and home internet connections handing out a different IP address each session — normal behaviour, not a real security event. These new-device emails have been turned off so they no longer arrive as false alarms. Login history continues to be recorded and is available to administrators.

Sending email to the full membership list could silently deliver to only some recipients due to SMTP timeouts. Emails are now queued and sent individually to each recipient, so all members reliably receive the message.

Status messages flashed by the server (for example after deleting an event or updating your account) now pop up automatically. Previously they were hidden behind the bell icon until you clicked it.

After deleting an event you are now taken back to the events list instead of being left on a page for an event that no longer exists.

Clicking Delete Event now asks for confirmation before removing the event. If you dismiss the prompt, the event is kept.

A permission check that prevents unauthorised users from deleting events was accidentally disabled. It has been restored — only users with edit rights on an event (its creator, club members, or contest administrators) can now delete it.

Dates of birth on member profile pages were showing as a raw timestamp (e.g. 1965-02-15T00:00:00Z) instead of a readable date. They now display in the expected DD/MM/YYYY format (e.g. 15/02/1965).

A bug that could make the live tracking and timesheet pages fail while terrain height data was being reused behind the scenes has been fixed. Tracking pages should now stay available even when a local terrain data file needs to be reset.

The GNZ tracking site recently experienced an issue where a FLARM (likely running in competition mode) constantly changed its ID and appeared as hundreds of unregistered trackers (like *AB, *CD, *EF) on the map. This drowned out real aircraft and created a safety risk by obscuring real traffic.

To address this, the tracking site now automatically hides all unregistered trackers when too many of them are present. If this happens, you can unhide them by clicking the cog icon in the top left.