SQWK | User Guide

Getting Started

SQWK captures your MSFS 2024 and MSFS 2020 flights automatically and delivers airline-grade post-flight analysis to your browser. Getting set up takes about two minutes.

Download & Install

Grab the Windows installer from the download page and run the setup wizard.

Authenticate

Right-click the tray icon or use the MSFS panel to link your SQWK account.

Fly & Review

Flights upload automatically after landing. Open your dashboard to debrief.

Tip: Enable auto-start in the exporter so it launches with Windows. You will never miss a flight.

Telemetry Exporter

The Telemetry Exporter is a lightweight Windows application that connects to MSFS 2024 or MSFS 2020 via SimConnect and streams flight data to SQWK.

SIM MSFS 2024 / 2020

EXP Exporter

API SQWK Cloud

WEB Dashboard

How It Works

SimConnect bridge — reads position, attitude, airspeed, engine state, control surfaces, gear, flaps, and more in real time.
Phase-adaptive cadence — every plan captures at up to 30 Hz during dynamic phases (takeoff, approach, landing) and decimates to ~1 Hz in cruise for replay-grade detail with minimal overhead.
Background operation — runs silently in the system tray. No window required.
Auto-upload — flight data is sent to SQWK immediately after landing. Flights appear on your dashboard within seconds.

System Requirements

Requirement	Details
OS	Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit)
Disk	100 MB free space
RAM	100 MB available
Network	Internet connection for uploads
Simulator	Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 or 2020 (the in-sim panel currently requires MSFS 2024)

Tray Menu

Right-click the system tray icon for quick actions:

Open SQWK Linker — show the app window
Authenticate… — link or re-link your SQWK account
Restart capture — restart the telemetry capture session
Check for updates — check for a newer exporter release
Hide window — hide the app window to the tray
Quit — exit the app

Left-clicking the tray icon toggles the app window.

Local Flight History

The exporter keeps your full flight history on disk so the Debriefs view loads instantly, works offline, and survives cloud-side retention. On your first sign-in, existing cloud flights are backfilled into the local cache with a progress banner that counts up as pages import.

Each signed-in account gets its own isolated cache, so a Free account and a Pro account signed in from the same machine never see each other's flights. The Debriefs view mirrors the web dashboard: cards or table, full-text search, time-window and sort filters, pagination, and a page-size chooser (10, 25, 50, or all).

Older flights whose scoring data has been pruned by cloud retention keep their locally cached score and are marked with a "scored on prior analyzer version" badge, so you never lose a score you have already seen. If you ever need to start over, use Settings > Clear local cache for this account. The next sign-in re-imports from the cloud.

Flight Detection

SQWK detects flights automatically — no buttons to press, no recordings to start.

Takeoff Detection

The exporter monitors ground contact, airspeed, and altitude. When the aircraft lifts off, recording begins and telemetry capture starts at your configured cadence.

Landing Detection

Touchdown is detected from weight-on-wheels combined with deceleration and ground proximity. Once the aircraft is confirmed on the ground, recording stops and the flight uploads automatically.

Session Boundaries

Each takeoff-to-landing cycle is treated as a separate flight. Touch-and-goes create individual flight records. If you reposition mid-flight the exporter resets gracefully.

Career Mode: SQWK works with MSFS 2024 Career Mode flights. The exporter captures telemetry identically regardless of flight mode.

Landing Analysis

Every landing is scored and graded using multiple parameters, the same categories real airlines review in their Flight Data Monitoring programs. All scoring thresholds are derived from real-world aviation standards.

32,000+ runway database: SQWK ships with a global runway database covering more than 32,000 runways across 26,000+ airports, so touchdown zone, centerline, and rollout scoring stay accurate at regional fields and bush airports, not just the major hubs other MSFS tools cover.

Score Components

Twelve metrics are grouped into three flight phases. Landing carries the most weight because it is the most demanding and consequential phase.

Landing (64%)

Vertical speed at touchdown (fpm) — scaled to aircraft category

G-force at touchdown relative to 1.0G — based on FAR 25.473 structural limits

Number of bounces after initial touchdown — zero is perfect

Largest sideways drift from the touchdown point during rollout, measured across the landing direction

Distance from the runway threshold to your touchdown point — class-aware targets

Descent-rate arrest, pitch smoothness, duration, and float control during the flare

Heading consistency during the rollout — measures directional control after touchdown

Wing-level discipline at touchdown — based on ICAO wing-strike guidance

Bounced landings: When a landing bounces, the touchdown metrics (landing rate, G-force, bank, pitch) are scored at the hardest contact in the sequence, not the final settle. A firm first impact followed by a gentle second touchdown scores on the first impact, and each bounce is penalized on top through the Bounces metric. Touchdown zone distance is measured at the first contact.

Approach (12%)

Composite of speed, descent rate, bank, sideslip, and glideslope consistency

Takeoff (24%)

Runway used for takeoff roll — thresholds vary by aircraft class. Skipped on touch-and-goes and pattern work where no real ground roll was recorded.

How closely rotation speed matched the target Vr. Skipped on touch-and-goes since there's no real rotation event to grade.

Time spent exceeding flap speed limits (seconds). The flight page lists each violation with its flap setting, Vfe limit, peak speed, and duration, and shades those intervals on the speed charts.

Touch-and-goes and pattern work: Flights with no measurable ground roll (under ~500 ft) skip the Takeoff Distance and Rotation Accuracy metrics entirely. Their weights are redistributed across the remaining metrics so the score reflects only what was actually flown.

Operational context bonus: Difficult conditions — crosswind, low visibility, weather, night ops, grass/gravel runways, or unlit strips — can add up to +15 points. On hard-difficulty flights (difficulty index ≥ 5/10), this bonus can push your final score above 100, up to a maximum of 115.

Takeoff & landing weight: Your takeoff and landing weight are compared against your aircraft type's published maximum weights (MTOW and MLW) and shown with your margin on the flight's Weights & Fuel card. These checks use the matched aircraft profile's structural limits, so they appear once your exact type has a profile. A flight that only matches the generic class fallback still shows its fuel reserves, but omits the max-weight margin rather than comparing a widebody against a narrowbody limit.

Single-engine taxi: On multi-engine types the analyzer recognizes reduced-engine taxi, the fuel-saving procedure airline FDM programs credit. When a meaningful stretch of your taxi-out or taxi-in runs on fewer than all engines, that time appears on the flight's Weights & Fuel card. Recognition is informational and never affects your score, and it needs a current exporter build (older uploads lack the engine data). Types where the procedure is real-world practice also document it in their aircraft cheatsheet under Ground Operations.

Score Grades

85–100+ Excellent

70–84 Strong

55–69 Solid

40–54 Developing

0–39 Needs focus

Scores can reach up to 115 on hard-difficulty flights (difficulty index ≥ 5/10) when operational context bonuses are earned.

Aircraft Categories

Landing rate thresholds adapt to aircraft class. Each category has a target (ideal) and maximum rate:

GA Piston

~68 kt approach — target 130 fpm, max 300 fpm

C152, C172

Turboprop

~96 kt approach — target 160 fpm, max 340 fpm

King Air, ATR

Airliner

~145 kt approach — target 180 fpm, max 380 fpm

737, A320

Default

~110 kt approach — target 170 fpm, max 340 fpm

Other aircraft types

Score Comparison

Each landing is benchmarked against your recent baseline, showing improvement or regression at a glance.

This landing 89/100

Recent baseline 81/100

Gap +8 pts

Exceedance Detection

If a parameter exceeds the aircraft's published limits — for example, a hard landing above the manufacturer's structural threshold — SQWK flags it as an exceedance. These appear as advisories on your flight detail page.

Approach Reconstruction

SQWK reconstructs your approach from captured telemetry, giving you a visual replay of the final minutes before touchdown.

Radio Alt (ft) 3° glideslope ref

3D Approach Replay

The approach view renders your flight path in three dimensions relative to the runway. You can see glideslope deviation, lateral track, and altitude progression from several miles out through touchdown.

Flight Path Angle

Flight path angle (FPA) is computed from your actual descent geometry. SQWK shows how your FPA compares to a standard 3-degree glideslope, highlighting where you were steep, shallow, or on target.

Markers and Gates

Altitude gates and distance markers overlay the approach, so you can evaluate stabilization at specific points — 1000 ft AGL, 500 ft, short final, and threshold crossing height.

Why this matters: Most landing problems start on the approach. Reconstructing the approach path makes the root cause visible — a rushed turn to final, an unstable glideslope intercept, or excess speed at the threshold.

Flight Data Monitoring

Flight Data Monitoring (FDM) is how airlines identify risk before it becomes an incident. SQWK brings the same concept to sim flying.

What FDM Does

Instead of just grading the touchdown, FDM reviews the entire flight envelope — approach stability, speed management, configuration changes, and parameter trends. When something falls outside normal operating boundaries, it gets flagged.

Event Markers

Key events are marked on the telemetry timeline: gear extension, flap changes, speed brake deployment, and configuration transitions. These markers help you correlate what happened in the cockpit with what the data shows.

Parameter Limits

Each aircraft profile defines normal, caution, and exceedance thresholds for critical parameters. When your flight enters a caution or exceedance zone, SQWK records it and surfaces the advisory in your debrief.

Aircraft Profiles

SQWK includes 125+ aircraft profiles built from real Pilot Operating Handbooks and manufacturer documentation. Pro accounts get access to the full library.

What a Profile Includes

V-speeds — Vref, Vapp, Vso, Vs1, Vfe, Vno, Vne as applicable
Approach configuration — typical flap settings, gear speeds, approach speeds by weight
Landing limits — max vertical speed, crosswind limits, tailwind limits
Scoring thresholds — tuned per aircraft so a turboprop is not judged by airliner standards

Automatic Profile Resolution

The exporter reads the aircraft type from SimConnect. SQWK matches it to the best available profile automatically. If no exact match exists, a generic category profile (light single, turboprop, jet) is applied.

Weight-Aware Approach Targets

On supported types, the approach-speed coaching target is computed from your actual landing weight: the profile's published Vref reference scales with weight the same way the real speed cards do, then the usual wind and weather additives apply. The approach-speed card shows the landing weight the target assumed, so you can verify it against your own performance calculation.

If no landing weight was captured, or the captured value fails a plausibility check against the aircraft's structural limits, coaching falls back to the profile's fixed reference speed rather than trusting a suspect number.

Aircraft Cheatsheet

Each profile includes a quick-reference cheatsheet with key numbers, checklists, and operating notes. Open it from the aircraft selector on any flight detail page.

Checklist items carry a short "why it matters" note connecting the item to how your flight is scored, for example how your landing flap selection sets the Vref target used for approach-speed scoring, or why late gear costs Approach Stability points. Notes are tailored to the aircraft class, and some aircraft carry type-specific notes.

The Aircraft Library also shows a "Your Performance" card for the selected aircraft: your average and median landing rate, approach stability, and touchdown speed from recent flights on that type, plotted against the profile's own targets. Metrics appear once a few flights are logged so the averages are meaningful.

Web Dashboard

Your flights live on the web at sqwk.io. Access them from any device with a browser.

Flight List

The dashboard shows all your flights in reverse chronological order. Each entry displays the departure and arrival airports, aircraft type, landing grade, and key metrics at a glance.

Flight Detail

Tap any flight to open the full debrief: approach reconstruction, telemetry charts, landing scorecard, event timeline, and advisories. Every data point captured during the flight is available for review.

Filtering and Search

Filter flights by aircraft, airport, date range, or landing grade. Useful for reviewing a specific training session or comparing approaches into the same runway.

Trend Tracking

Individual flights are useful. Trends over time are where real improvement happens.

Benchmarks

SQWK tracks your rolling averages for key metrics — vertical speed, centerline deviation, glideslope tracking, and overall score. Each new flight is compared against your recent baseline so you can see whether you are improving, plateauing, or regressing.

Progress Charts

Visual trend lines show your performance over your last flights. Spikes and dips are easy to spot, and you can correlate them with aircraft changes, weather, or new procedures you have been practicing.

Training Insights

The dashboard's Training Insights card ranks your weakest scoring metrics across the last 90 days of scored flights, so you always know what to work on next. Each focus area needs at least five scored flights in the window before it is ranked, which keeps one rough landing from labeling a habit.

Free accounts see their weakest areas named with a severity rating. Pro adds the score trend for each area (are you improving or sliding?), the aircraft dragging it down the most, and coaching guidance for the top focus area. The top focus area also lists the flights to review: the flights in the window where that metric scored lowest, each linking straight to its debrief. The flight debrief also flags when a flight repeats — or improves on — your #1 focus area.

Pro also slices each focus area by flying conditions: crosswind (under 5 kt, 5 to 12 kt, over 12 kt), arrival runway length, and visibility. A condition is only called out when you have enough scored flights on both sides of the comparison and the score gap between your best and worst conditions is large enough to be a real pattern, so a single rough crosswind landing will not label a habit. When one clears the bar, the coaching guidance leads with it ("Most of the gap shows up above 12 kt of crosswind"), which turns a weak area into a concrete practice plan. Flights recorded before condition data was captured simply sit out of the comparison.

Tip: Pro accounts retain flights in the cloud for a full year, giving you enough data to compare seasonal patterns and long training arcs. Free accounts retain 30 days in the cloud. The telemetry exporter also caches your full flight history on-device per account, so older scores stay visible in the debrief view even after cloud retention expires.

In-Sim Panel

MSFS 2024 only. The in-sim panel currently requires MSFS 2024. If you only have MSFS 2020, you can skip this section: the telemetry exporter still captures and uploads your flights via SimConnect, and your scores and analysis appear on the website after each landing.

The SQWK in-sim panel lives inside MSFS 2024 and gives you real-time feedback without leaving the cockpit.

Installing the Panel

The Windows installer offers to copy the panel into your MSFS 2024 Community folder during setup. If you skipped that step or need to repair it later, use the Start Menu shortcut Install or Repair SQWK MSFS Panel.

Authentication

Open the panel from the MSFS toolbar or Add-ons menu and tap Authenticate. Your browser opens to authorize the connection. Once linked, the panel stays authenticated across sessions.

Real-Time Notifications

The panel shows toast notifications for key events: flight detection, upload progress, and landing results. After touchdown you get an immediate summary without tabbing out of the sim.

Removing the Panel

Use the Start Menu shortcut Remove SQWK MSFS Panel to cleanly remove the panel from your Community folder. The exporter continues to work without the panel installed — it is optional.

Flight Sharing

Share individual flights with anyone — instructors, friends, or your virtual airline group.

Public Share Links

From any flight detail page, generate a share link. Anyone with the link can view the flight debrief — approach replay, scorecard, and telemetry charts — without needing a SQWK account.

Flight Cards

Each shared flight includes a rendered flight card — a visual summary image that previews cleanly in Discord, social media, and messaging apps.

Privacy

Flights are private by default. Share links are unique, unguessable tokens. You control which flights are shared and can revoke a share link at any time.

Medals

The medal case turns your flying history into earned credentials. Medals cover landing technique, approach quality, precision, consistency, exploration, endurance, and airmanship, struck in bronze, silver, or gold. Locked medals stay visible with their exact criteria, so you always know what a medal takes.

Legendary destinations

Eight legendary medals, struck in obsidian and gold, mark the world's storied approaches: Lukla, Paro, Saba, St. Barthelemy, Madeira, Innsbruck, Toncontin, and St. Maarten. Land there on an eligible flight and the medal is yours. Every medal also shows what percentage of pilots hold it, and each earned medal carries your strike number: being among the first to earn one is part of the medal.

Streaks and conditions

Streak medals reward consecutive sub-100 fpm landings; one firm arrival resets the run. Condition medals cover landings in rain, snow, or storm with real crosswind, and flights through visibility below 800 meters.

Verified, or it doesn't count

Medals only unlock from eligible flights, the same verification gate the leaderboard uses. Flights that used slew, sustained slow motion, or an external view at landing never earn a medal, and neither do flights captured before eligibility signals existed. That gate is what makes a medal worth having.

Your history counts

Existing flights are evaluated retroactively: each medal is dated to the flight that would have earned it at the time. Fresh unlocks celebrate once with a toast on your next visit, and every flight detail page lists the medals that flight earned.

Once struck, never revoked

Scoring updates never take a medal away. Every unlock records the scoring version that judged it, so your wall only ever grows.

Skill ratings and currency

Skill ratings distill your recent verified flying into the same score bands used across the app: Landing and Approach ratings take the median of your last ten scored flights, and Crosswind shows the strongest crosswind you have landed recently. Ratings follow the real-world currency rule: three qualifying flights in the last 90 days keep a rating current; stop flying and it greys to lapsed until you fly again. It never disappears, and it is never paywalled.

Challenge arena medals

When a challenge board closes, medals are minted from the final standings: Arena Debut for finishing on the board, Podium Finish for the top three, and Challenge Victor for the win. Withdrawn entries never medal.

Public pilot profile

Opt in under Settings to publish your medal wall at a public page: your handle, display name, medals with rarity and strike numbers, career stats, and the flights you have individually shared. Nothing else is exposed, medals never link to private flights, and quality stats count only eligible flights. You pick your handle once, before the profile first goes public; after that it locks so shared links never break. Switch it off any time and the page returns to not-found within a minute.

Data & Exports

Every account can export flight data in multiple formats for external analysis, archiving, or use in other tools.

Export Formats

Format	Use Case
JSON	Full telemetry payload for programmatic analysis or archiving.
CSV	Spreadsheet-friendly tabular data. Open in Excel, Google Sheets, or any data tool.
KML	Flight path for Google Earth and other geographic viewers.
PLN	Flight plan format compatible with MSFS and other flight planners.

Flight Photos

Attach screenshots to any flight as a visual log of the session. Photos are stored with the flight and visible in the detail view and on shared links.

Data Retention

Plan	Retention	Flight Cap	Telemetry
Free	30 days	20 / month	30 Hz
Pro	1 year	Unlimited	30 Hz

Free vs. Pro

Free covers the full post-flight debrief for every pilot, including every flight kept end-to-end at 30 Hz in the cloud (taxi to shutdown, not just the last 15 seconds) and synced across every device you sign in to. Pro sharpens scoring and coaching to the specific aircraft you're flying, with per-airframe cheatsheets and procedures.

Capability	Free	Pro
Aircraft-specific analysis	Class-tuned defaults	125+ aircraft profiles
Aircraft cheatsheets	Not included	Per-airframe sheet
Procedural coaching	Not included	Aircraft-specific callouts
Training Insights	Weakest area named	Trends, condition breakdowns, coaching, flights to review
Flying Reports window	Last 30 days	Full year
Telemetry retention	30 days	1 year
Flight logging	20 / month	Unlimited
Full-flight cloud replay	Every flight	Every flight

Pro is $3.99/month or $35.88/year (saves 25%). See the pricing page for full details.

When to upgrade: If you want your scores and coaching calibrated to the exact aircraft you fly rather than a shared class default, Pro unlocks 125+ aircraft-specific profiles and cheatsheets. The year-long retention also makes Flying Reports show seasonal and training-block trends instead of just last month.

Troubleshooting

Exporter Not Connecting to MSFS

If you see "Failed to connect to SimConnect":

Make sure MSFS 2024 or MSFS 2020 is running and you have loaded into an active flight (not the main menu).
Restart the exporter from the tray menu.
Verify that SimConnect is enabled in your MSFS settings.

Tray Icon Not Visible

Windows may have collapsed the exporter icon into the hidden icons area:

Click the ^ arrow in the taskbar to show hidden icons.
If the icon is missing entirely, launch the exporter from the Start Menu under SQWK Telemetry Exporter.
You can also run the exporter directly from C:\Program Files\SQWK\Telemetry Exporter\flight-review-exporter.exe

Authentication Failed

If you see "Invalid API key" or authentication errors:

Re-authenticate via the tray menu or in-sim panel.
If that does not work, go to Settings, generate a new API key, and reconfigure the exporter manually.

Flights Not Appearing

If flights are not showing up on your dashboard after landing:

Check your internet connection.
Verify that the exporter is authenticated (tray icon should show a connected state).
Restart the exporter and fly again.
If the issue persists, open the app's Settings tab to find the log file path, then review the log for errors.

Performance Issues

If MSFS stutters with the exporter running:

Lower the capture cadence in the exporter settings. Phase-adaptive sampling decimates cruise to ~1 Hz automatically, but reducing peak rate below 30 Hz further cuts simulator overhead.
Ensure no other SimConnect-heavy applications are running simultaneously.

Uninstalling

Open Settings > Apps > Installed Apps in Windows, find "SQWK Telemetry Exporter", and click Uninstall. The uninstaller removes program files, the managed panel package, and shortcuts. Your configuration in %APPDATA% is preserved unless you delete it manually.

Resources & Support

Stuck, curious, or want to connect with other SQWK pilots? Here is where to go.

Discord — community chat, support, and feature requests
Changelog — every release, documented
Download — latest installer and release notes
Pricing — Free vs. Pro comparison

Contact

For account issues or bug reports, reach out on Discord or use the in-app feedback button (bottom-right corner of the dashboard).

User Guide