Record an exercise while it runs — with timestamps that are right, because they are made at the moment it happens and not from memory in the evening. Then review it, file it as a report and, if two assessors were at work, merge both logs into one.
It is a record, not a monitoring system. It contains no breathing-apparatus monitoring and no safety function for the crew at work. Nothing on which life depends directly may hang on a browser window staying open.
It records what somebody entered — not what happened.
The page needs no sign-in and no account. Open the address, and that is it. On the first visit with a connection it stores itself on the device; after that it runs without a network too (chapter 13).
There are five tabs at the top:
| Tab | What for |
|---|---|
| Exercise | Preparation and, once started, the running recording |
| Review | Timeline, phases, split times, report and PDF |
| Compare | Several runs side by side — for competitions and exercise series |
| Archive | All exercises, backup, import, device name |
| About | Short description, licence key, technical details |
Create a test exercise, press three marks, take a photo, end it, produce the report. That takes four minutes and answers the questions you would otherwise be asking at the exercise site.
The Exercise tab shows the preparation. From top to bottom:
The exercise type brings the quick marks and the split times with it — it is the real decision. Supplied are rescue from below (shaft, excavation, silo), rescue from above and fall protection. If nothing fits, take the free exercise: it starts with no marks, and everything is recorded during the exercise as a note, a photo or your own mark.
Name, date, site, unit, exercise lead. None of it is required — otherwise the name is built from the exercise type and the date. Roles instead of names are enough for the review (“crew leader”, “rescuer 1”); see chapter 14.
The marks of the exercise type sit there as tiles. Tapping switches one off or back on. A brigade that does not record the derig deselects it — then it is not in the way during the exercise. What is deselected does not vanish without trace from the review; it appears there as not recorded.
The competition mode switch reveals a column for target times per mark. The review then shows the deviation from the target for every mark. The field competition or exercise series is the name under which the Compare tab groups several runs.
If you are in a hurry, press ▶ Start exercise straight away. Name, site and lead can still be added while the exercise runs — the clock is going by then, and that is what counts.
Quick marks — marks for short — are the large targets that write a time with one press while the exercise runs. They are made for gloves, not for a fingertip.
They are managed through ✎ Edit marks in the preparation, or ✎ Marks during a running exercise. The dialog can do three things:
In the preparation the marks belong to the exercise type, not to this one exercise. They are therefore deselected rather than deleted — the exercise type stays unchanged for the next time. Only marks you added yourself really disappear.
In a running exercise the list is a frozen copy. There every mark can be deleted.
Recorded entries are never lost. If a mark is deleted for which times have already been written, those entries stay in the log — with their time and their text. From then on they count as a note and no longer count towards the split times. The line in the dialog says beforehand how many entries are involved.
When renaming, the entries already recorded come along, so that two names for the same mark do not end up in the log. A comment you added to an entry stays untouched.
The button is available on a finished exercise too. A typo in a mark name should not stand in the report for ever.
A name you change in the preparation applies to this exercise only — next time the original is back. To keep the change, save the preparation as your own template.
▶ Start exercise sets the zero point. From here the clock at the top runs, and below it stands the split since the last mark.
| Way | When |
|---|---|
| Press a mark | For everything that is planned. One press, one time. A second press on the same mark writes another time — useful with a second casualty. |
| ✎ Note | For everything that was not planned. The time is captured on pressing, not on saving — what is measured is the exercise, not your typing speed. |
| ⚠ Observation | Like a note, but marked as a fault straight away. |
| ▣ Photo | Camera straight from the page, or from files for a picture already on the device. |
| ♪ Voice note | When your hands are not free, or it has to be quick. |
Do not stare at the device. The mark is pressed when something has happened — not when there is time for it. What goes wrong can be corrected to the second afterwards (chapter 6). That is the reason the correction exists.
Sometimes the supervisor has to stop the exercise: check the anchor, check the knots, secure the crew. That time is not the team’s to answer for, and it should therefore not stand in their time. That is what ⏸ Safety hold in the clock bar is for.
The hold time is deducted from the total — and with it from every split time, every mark and every target-time comparison that lies after the hold. What lies before it does not change. The review and the PDF therefore carry a line of their own:
Start 19:00, end 19:22 — twenty-two minutes on the wall clock. In between a hold of 4:30 for a safety check. The sheet then reads total duration 17:30 and below it of which safety hold (deducted) 4:30. Start and end stay the real clock times — only then is it possible to see why the span is larger than the time.
Photos, notes and observations can be recorded during a hold exactly as usual — the safety check is often the very moment when something stands out. They are given the time at which the clock stands. The quick marks stay pressable too; a mark recorded there also sits on the stopped clock.
The timestamps of all entries stay unchanged — the deduction happens only on display. A hold therefore cannot be “hidden” afterwards: it stands as an entry in the timeline, with its reason, and goes onto the PDF that way. That is the point of a documented pause.
If the exercise is ended while a hold is still running, the hold ends with the exercise — there is a separate entry in the log for that. When two assessors merge their logs (chapter 9), the holds from the second device come along, clock offset included.
Every entry in the log can be tapped. The dialog behind it can do four things:
Pressed too late? Enter the time. Digits are enough: 0836 means 8:36. A colon works too, and 1:02:30 for more than an hour. A time in the future is rejected.
The comment is where a time becomes an observation. Ten seconds right after the photo are worth more than ten minutes in the evening.
Well handled, note or fault. These three carry the debrief.
The most important field, and the least obvious. Only what is entered here feeds into the split times. If something was recorded as a note that was really a mark, assign it here afterwards — and the review is right again.
A photo or a note after the end of the exercise is not given an invented time. The entry slides to the end, is marked as added later, and the tool asks straight away for the time it refers to.
End exercise records the end time. After that the marks are locked: they stay readable but can no longer be pressed. That prevents a time that never existed from appearing while you look through the log.
If there really is something to add, Release quick marks frees the targets again — with a confirmation. A mark recorded now is given the time of the end of the exercise and is to be dragged to the right time through its entry. The lock survives a reload.
Comments, photos and observations can be added at any time regardless.
The Review tab shows four things one below the other.
Everything in the order in which it happened: marks, notes, photos, observations. Marks are highlighted in red. If two assessors were at work, every line says which device it came from.
Every recorded mark with its time from the start and the gap to the previous one, with the start and end of the exercise as brackets. This list is derived from the entries themselves and therefore cannot be incomplete — it knows the marks you added yourself as well.
The curated spans of the exercise type: “start to anchor set”, “safety check to 1st rescuer over the edge” and so on. They say more than the phases, but they only cover what the exercise type provides for.
Then the entry is missing its link to the mark. The review now says which mark is missing. The repair: tap the entry and assign it under counts as a quick mark (chapter 6).
Competition mode only: the deviation from the entered target for every mark.
A rope rescue exercise happens down the shaft. There is no network there and usually no shared Wi-Fi. A sync that fails exactly where it is needed would be no sync at all. Therefore: no live sync, but merging after the exercise.
That is also the simpler case. Two assessors complement each other — they do not change the same line at the same time. It is the merging of two lists that only grow.
edge and shaft, say, or A1 and A2. The name lands on every entry and later answers the question of who saw what. It appears only when there really are two devices.Both devices are equal. There is no main device — one of them only collects at the end.
Each records what they see. No network needed, no coordination.
Every entry keeps its identifier. What is already there does not come in a second time. Importing the same file twice by accident duplicates nothing.
The same procedure, one after another: device 1 receives the backup from device 2, then the one from device 3. Every backup is merged into the same exercise, each with its own clock offset.
The clock offset is shown, not calculated. The tool suggests nothing it cannot know. Which entries belong together is decided by the exercise lead, on screen.
The occasion is an award: twelve teams, ten stations, every team at every station. Three terms follow from that:
| Term | Meaning | In the tool |
|---|---|---|
| Series | The competition or the exercise series | Field “competition or exercise series” |
| Station | One exercise type within this series | The chosen exercise type |
| Run | One team at one station — that is, one exercise | One created exercise |
The Compare tab answers two questions: overall standing shows who is still missing where; the station table shows who was faster at this station.
Comparison is always within one station only. Placing marks across station boundaries side by side would be nonsense — the same mark means something different at another station.
For the next run New exercise is enough; the series stays set, and all that is asked for is the team or crew.
Produced on the server, so that the sheet looks the same everywhere. For that, the log of this one exercise together with the photos it contains is sent there, set and returned — nothing is stored there. Without a connection the button says so; the PDF can be caught up at any time, since the exercise is on the device. Until then the backup in the archive is the way to get it off the device.
Through the picture view. On the phone the share sheet leads to the Photos app, mail and “Save to Files”.
Safari opens the share sheet only immediately on a tap. If the trip to the server or the collecting of the photos sits in between, the gesture is spent. That is why a small dialog “file is ready” asks once more — that is not a fault, that is the second tap.
Anyone who always uses the same nine marks does not set them up afresh before every exercise. The preparation can be saved as your own template — with deselected marks, renamed marks, your own marks and target times.
Templates can be written out as a file and imported on other devices. Importing never overwrites: a template with the same name is numbered through.
That is how the agreed set of marks reaches every device in the brigade — and the second assessor’s device.
Opening it once where there is reception is enough: the page stores itself on the device.
Everything to do with the exercise works without a connection — opening and reloading the page, pressing marks, taking photos, recording notes and observations, commenting, correcting times and reviewing.
Only the PDF needs a connection.
Open it once on the station Wi-Fi before setting off for the exercise site. Then everything is there, even when nothing works at the site.
In the browser, nowhere else. The exercise data sits in localStorage, the photos in IndexedDB. No upload, no access from outside, no sign-in.
The storage belongs not to the address but to the program that opened it. The same address in Safari and in Chrome are two separate spaces.
And a link somebody taps inside Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp goes into a third: those apps bring their own browser, which keeps its own storage and clears it without warning. Record there, open the page in Safari later, and you will find nothing.
If the page is running in such an in-app browser, a warning band with the way out sits at the top. The archive tab also always says which container the list is currently in.
Anyone who clears the browser store, resets the device or works in a private window loses the recording for good. After an exercise that counts, the backup in the archive tab is part of the routine — as much a matter of course as making the kit ready again.
Data therefore reaches another device only as a file, through “back up” and, on the phone, through the share sheet.
Personal data: names are never required. The role is enough for the review. For photographs of people the brigade’s usual rules apply — the tool makes no provision for that.
Recording, reviewing and backing up work without a key.
Without an activated key the PDF is produced as a sample print, watermarked and without the confirmation sheet. The key is entered in the About tab and then applies to every FW Tools app in this browser.
Details of the tiers are on the pricing page.
Tap the entry and enter the time. 0836 is enough for 8:36.
Until August 2026 that was indeed the case in in-app browsers on Android, and it is fixed. If it still happens: reload the page once, so that the updated version is loaded.
The entry is missing its link to the mark. Tap the entry, set counts as a quick mark. See chapter 6.
Almost always the wrong browser. The archive tab says at the top which container you are currently in. See chapter 14.
It works anyway. Device 2 backs up, device 1 imports and chooses “merge into an existing exercise”; the target is proposed by the nearest start on the same day. The clock offset is then shifted by hand — more work than with the handover file, but it works.
Yes: adjust the preparation and save it as your own template. See chapter 12.
Better not. As long as the exercise runs, the page keeps the screen awake. If the device is locked, the browser may unload the page in the background — the saved data stays, but the camera and voice recording break off.
The rope rescue part of this tool was developed substantially with Axel Manz. The exercise types, the quick marks and the sequences the timing follows come from rope rescue practice — not from a desk.