Instructions & FAQs

These documents are:

Pilot

• 1. Pilot Certificate (Front and Back)

  2. Logbook entry showing a "successfully completed" flight review

     • for new certificates/ratings, use the temporary (paper) certificate as your flight review

  3. Headshot

     • Think passport picture. Most events use these as ID badges.

  4. Medical certificate (if appropriate)

Balloon

1. Picture

   • A nice full-on shot of your balloon by itself. Like an ID picture of your balloon. This is not a beauty shot. It's an ID.

2. Registration

3. Airworthiness (Limitations if experimental)

4. Logbook entry showing the last annual

Certificate of Insurance 

1. Must include:

   1. Company name and policy number

   2. Expiration Date

   3. "Covered" Balloon registration numbers

   4. "Covered" Pilots

RPS and Starr have nice one-page layouts that work perfectly for this purpose. Please No Quotes

Frame the picture so only the document is in the picture. Make sure it fills the frame, but the entire document is visible. Check the photo to make sure it is in focus, is readable, and doesn't have a glare making part of the document unreadable. For logbook entries, it may be necessary to combine two pictures, the left-hand page and the right-hand page. PowerPoint or Keynote are good tools to combine the left and right as top and bottom in one picture. Save the files in a jpg or jpeg format. The Insurance and limitations documents can be in PDF format. Remember, by doing it correctly for BPDP, you're doing it correctly for all those events you plan to apply to.

If this is your initial entry into the Data Port, you should select NEW and plan to upload everything.

After your information is in the Data Port, you should select UPDATE and select which documents you need to update. 

Note. You'll never have to re-upload documents that don't expire like your Pilot Certificate or the balloon Airworthiness Certificate. You only have to upload the others when they are about to or have expired. Of course, if you get a new Pilot Certificate or a new Airworthiness Certificate, you should upload those as well.

We'll review your documents. That means checking they are the correct document, readable, and "valid". We'll enter any relevant dates, the system will calculate expiration dates, if necessary, and update your status(es). Then we'll send you an email, containing the status of all your documents. This is your acknowledgment that we have received and reviewed your documents.

You'll automatically get a similar email shortly after the first of each month giving you nearly 60 days' notice of an upcoming expiration date.

Missing means, there is no document to review.

Valid means the document is good to go and does not expire.

Current means the document is good to go and expires more than 60 days in the future.

Expiring means the document is good to go but expires within the next 60 days. It will show the expiration date. 

Expired means the document is expired. The expiration date is shown.

Not Valid means there is something wrong with the document. Usually, this means something is unreadable, or in the case of a flight review, it could be the language is not correct. It must state "successfully completed". 

Check Data means we have an error somewhere in the system. We're looking into it.

The Overall status will be an aggregate of these document status messages. So if any document is missing, your overall status will be "Missing Docs". If any document is Expired, the status will be "Expired Docs". It's the same for Expiring. Only when every document is either Current or Valid, will you get a Current status.

Note in our previous system, we used to combine the Pilot and Balloon for an overall status message. We no longer do that and look at each pilot and each balloon as a separate entity.

For pilots the service is FREE! Forever!

For event organizers, there is a sliding scale based on the services needed and the number of pilots participating.

Ken is providing the service to the community and needs to recover some of the costs incurred in the process. It is NOT a "make-money" proposition.

Pilots, gather your documents, take pictures, and upload them to https://BPDocs.org/Data

If you were a participant in the PAD system, you're already in there.

Organizers, E-mail Ken ken at balloonpilotdocs.com to set up your organization.

Nope. This is a service to you. The intent is not to police the status of your documents. We're here to help you, have quick access to your ballooning documents at all times. And to share them with any organization you give us permission to share with. Think of us as a secretary who takes care of this stuff for you rather than the document police. In other words, the responsibility to keep the documents up to date in the Data Port is yours. We're just here to make it easier.

Nope. I consider us to be your politely nagging secretary. We're here to remind you when something is about to expire or has expired. We're taking a look at the document to make sure it's correct. We've found insurance documents that expired on the day they were insured. Most notably, we find Flight Review Endorsements that leave out the words, "satisfactorily completed". Those are the keywords in the FARs and what the FAA is looking for when they check your documents. If we can catch these BEFORE you have to share them with anyone, especially the FAA, then we've done our job. Whether you fix the documents or not is up to you. We're just reporting to you, and any organization you allow us to share with, the way it is.

At a minimum, if you tell us to share your documents with an organization, at a minimum, the event organizer can see the status of your documents. Some organizations may opt to see a copy of the document. Usually, this is due to the relationship with the local FSDO.  Remember that if you opt to share with an organization, they will be able to see your document status, whether you apply to their event or not. If you do apply, then you can tell them to get your documents and document status from the Data Port. We recommend to these organizations that they make uploading documents mandatory as part of their application process, UNLESS, you tell them and the Data Port to share your documents.

Yep. All you need to do is send us an email with your request. For you or your balloon. This is a service to you and when you no longer want or need it, let us know. We'll promptly remove you. A notice to this effect is at the bottom of each email you receive from the Data Port.

Use the menu and check out other pages on this website. Still don't find the answers, reach out to us. Ken at BalloonPilotDocs.com