Cloudy TowerPrivacy Policy
Effective October 17, 2026. Covers the Cloudy Tower iPhone app and cloudytower.com.
The short version
- There's no account. We don't know your name, email or Apple Account.
- Your logbook (progress, scores, streak) stays on your iPhone.
- Your speech is turned into text to grade it. We never receive your audio or your words.
- Weather comes straight from aviationweather.gov.
- Radio voice clips are fetched with a random install ID that isn't linked to you.
- Purchases go through Apple. We never see your payment details.
- No ads, no analytics, no tracking, and no data sold or shared.
1. Who we are
Cloudy Tower is made by Cloudy Tuesdays LLC ("we", "us"), a radio-communication training aid for pilots. Questions about this policy: support@cloudytower.com.
2. What stays on your iPhone
The app keeps these only on your device, in its own storage:
- Your logbook: lessons and checkrides completed, your scores for each call, XP, the days you practised, your daily goal, and the words of your very first call (as text).
- Your settings, your home airport and where you are in your training.
- Radio voice clips the app has downloaded, so they play again without a connection.
What you write on the kneeboard is kept only while you're on that call; it isn't saved.
We don't receive any of this. It's included in your iPhone or iCloud backups if you have those turned on, under Apple's terms. Logbook › Erase logbook clears your progress. Deleting the app removes everything it stored.
3. Microphone and speech
The app listens only while you hold the talk button. It uses Apple's speech recognition to turn what you say into text, then grades that text on your iPhone.
The app recognizes English as spoken where your iPhone is set (for example US, UK or Australian English), or US English if your iPhone uses another language. When your iPhone can recognize that language on the device, which current iPhones can for US English, the audio never leaves the phone. When it can't, Apple processes the audio to recognize it, under Apple's privacy policy. Either way, your audio and the text of what you said are never sent to us.
4. Location
If you tap "Use my location" when choosing a home airport, the app asks for your location once to find the airports near you. It matches it against an airport list built into the app. Your location is not stored and is not sent to us or anyone else. You can search for your airport instead.
5. Weather
To show the wind at your home airport, the app asks the Aviation Weather Center at aviationweather.gov (part of the US National Weather Service) for the latest METAR. The request goes straight from your iPhone to aviationweather.gov and contains the airport's identifier or a small box around the airport, never your own location. As with any web request, aviationweather.gov sees your IP address. Their privacy policy applies.
6. Radio voices
Most controller lines are recorded and built into the app. Lines it doesn't have built in, mostly ones that name your home airport and the fields near it, are fetched from our server, which runs on Amazon Web Services. Each request contains:
| Sent | Why |
|---|---|
| The text of the radio line | For example "Frederick Tower, Skyhawk Two One Four Lima". It names airports, runways and the lesson's callsign, never you. |
| The voice and radio setting | To pick the controller's voice. |
| A random install ID | A random number the app creates the first time it needs a clip. It isn't your device ID, advertising ID or Apple Account, and it isn't linked to anything else. |
| A timestamp and signature | So the server only answers the app. |
| Your IP address | Part of any internet request. |
The server counts requests per install ID and per IP address each day, to stop abuse. Those counts expire after three days and are then deleted automatically. Each clip is stored once and shared by everyone who needs the same line; it contains only the synthesized radio line. If the server can't be reached, the app uses the iPhone's built-in voice instead.
7. Purchases
Cloudy Tower Pro is sold through Apple's App Store. Apple handles payment and billing under its privacy policy. We don't receive your name, email, card or Apple Account. The app checks whether Pro is active with Apple's StoreKit, on your iPhone. We don't use Stripe or any other payment processor for the app.
8. What we don't do
- No accounts or sign-in.
- No advertising, and no advertising identifier.
- No analytics, crash-reporting or tracking SDKs in the app, and no tracking across other apps or websites.
- We don't sell or share personal information.
9. This website
cloudytower.com uses no cookies, analytics or trackers. If you leave your email for the launch notice, we store it, with the link that brought you to the site if it had a tag such as ?ref= or ?utm_source=, only to send that notice. It's never shared. To have it removed, email support@cloudytower.com. The site is served by Amazon Web Services, which processes your IP address to deliver pages and block abuse; we see only aggregate traffic counts.
The Downwind traffic-pattern pages remember your display settings, and the tag of the link that brought you there, in your browser's own storage. That stays in your browser and isn't sent to us.
If you email support, we use your message and address only to answer you.
10. The old Cloudy Tower website
Before the iPhone app, Cloudy Tower was a practice website with sign-in. It has closed. If you had an account there, its details (name, email address and training progress) are kept until you ask us to delete them; see Delete your account.
11. Children
Cloudy Tower isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect information from them.
12. Your rights
Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR or CCPA), you may have the right to access or delete personal information about you. Because the app doesn't send us your data, there's usually nothing for us to hold. You can delete everything on your iPhone yourself (section 2). For a launch-list email, an old website account or support messages, write to support@cloudytower.com.
13. Changes
If this policy changes, we'll post the new version here with a new effective date. If a change affects what the app sends, we'll say so in the app's release notes.