TrailSmart Help

How to Use TrailSmart

TrailSmart helps enthusiasts, clubs, recovery teams, and emergency or public-service workers build recovery judgment through a readiness path, planning estimates, a kinetic go/no-go review, scenario practice, concise team briefs, and after-action learning.

Important: TrailSmart is an educational and planning aid only. Always inspect your gear, follow the controlling SOP and product instructions, use competent operators and verified rated points, control risk-based exclusion zones, and stop whenever information, controls, or conditions are uncertain.

1. Main Sections

Readiness

Learn the six-decision recovery loop, choose a role, complete the prerequisite path, build a team brief, and save after-action learning.

Plan

Use planning estimates to explore pull force, equipment needs, and mechanical advantage. The estimates do not authorize a recovery.

Scenarios

Practice realistic recovery situations and review the recommended sequence of actions.

2. Planning Tabs

Winch & Pulley

This is the most detailed calculator. It walks through a recovery in steps:

Come-Along

Use this to estimate whether a manual hand winch is realistic for the situation. It helps estimate required pull force, pulley count, rope length, and how much handle work a recovery may take.

This is especially useful for understanding when a come-along is reasonable and when the job is beyond manual recovery.

Kinetic Go/No-Go Review

TrailSmart does not calculate a universal dynamic-recovery speed. Confirm the specific product instructions, compatible vehicles, rated dynamic points, stability, communications, exclusion controls, and a lower-energy alternative.

An incomplete control produces a no-go result. A complete checklist is still a planning gate, not authorization.

3. Scenarios

The scenario library presents recovery situations with choices. These are designed to help users think through:

4. Export and Import

Use Export to save your current state and scenario progress to a JSON file. Use Import to load a previously saved file back into the app.

This is useful if you want to save example setups, continue later, or share a configuration.

5. General Recovery Safety Reminders

6. Tips