Lost log book woes : (

Chesterspal

Chesterspal

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Chesterspal
I'm fairly certain I have lost my old student pilot log book. I moved a while back and lots of stuff from the basement, where this was, got tossed or misplaced. Have not flown since 1986, when I began my journey to become a PPL but had to give it up after my first solo.

Anyway, according to what I've found on the web, all may not be completely lost. There apparently is a system whereby the FAA will consider my plight and make a ruling.

I did find all the payment receipts for the plane rental (marked by hour and tenths of hours) and the instructor and it even has the plane markings for which CE-152 we used that day. I also found my solo certificate signed by my instructor. Also, bills for all the books, charts and plotters I had to purchase. Clearly, I did take flying lessons some 33 years ago. That cannot be disputed.

The school is long gone or was merged/bought with who is running the show there now so they cannot help me, I'm sure. Too much time has passed.

How bad is this for me? I'd really like to be able to get credit for all the hours (and money) I put in to this so I can move forward and now complete what I started. I added up some 30.4 hours of time at what is marked as "Dual Instructor 21".

Thanks!
 
You may have the totals for the hours you flew as dual received, but without the instructor signatures, they’re worthless.
 
Ryanb said:
You may have the totals for the hours you flew as dual received, but without the instructor signatures, they’re worthless.
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The instructor signatures are only tangential to the lost logbook, and the FAA has policies for dealing with lost logbooks, and I'm not aware of any need to have instructor signatures in order to reconstruct them. Do you have a citation?
 
dmspilot said:
The instructor signatures are only tangential to the lost logbook, and the FAA has policies for dealing with lost logbooks, and I'm not aware of any need to have instructor signatures in order to reconstruct them. Do you have a citation?
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Point is, he can’t just go buy a new logbook and fill out all of the dual received time and expect it to count without the instructors authorization. That would be like me pencil-whipping my logbook for a said number of dual-received hours and expecting it to hold clout.
 
Isn't it moot? Given no CFI will sign him off for the practical without re-demonstrating proficiency....from 1986. It's not about the hours. he can put 1,000 hours on the 8710 for the practical application for all anyone cares. It's about the ability to justify the endorsement. Captive audience I'm afraid; no CFI is gonna stick their signature on the line just because the OP wants to pick up where he left off in 1986 and get signed off to a practical in just 5-10 more hours of dual received.
 
hindsight2020 said:
no CFI is gonna stick their signature on the line just because the OP wants to pick up where he left off in 1986 and get signed off to a practical in just 5-10 more hours of dual received.
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Basically my whole point. Even with the proper signatures, it’s essentially worthless.
 
I could see why they feel important to you. But in the grand scheme of things they don’t help u much, and the search for them Is going to be a skinny chicken in the end. If you pick up where u left off you’ll solo pretty fast and build your hours quickly. after you pass your checkride you’ll find your old log book and have a laugh.
 
Skinny chicken, you say? That was the house specialty at the "upscale" restaurant we went to in East Java last year. Only spent three bucks on the dish, but I prefer mine to have really big breasts, like we do it back here in 'Murica.
 
Chesterspal said:
This is what I'm going by. BTW: it is a big deal to me. I spent 30+ hours flying as a student and that still belongs to me.
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Sounds to me like you already have it figured out. Good luck!
 
Dual rec'd pre-PPL is not PIC time so what is the value of it? Reconstruct as you can and count your solo time as PIC and just carry on. If you can make it through your checkride in 20 hours dual from where you are now, you are doing really well.
 
Contrarian view: It won't mean **** to the FAA, but it will make your insurance company happy to see those hours.
 
Photocopy the receipts and put them in a PDF. Based on that documentation, create a statement of your hours and total them. Have your signature on that notarized. Scan that into a PDF too and put everything in a safe place. Upload the PDFs to a cloud storage space.

Create a new log book and start it off with the total hours and statement of the above / lost logbook / brief statement attesting to it all.

It's your logbook, not anyone else's. The signatures are irrelevant to others. You know your hours, you have made a legal statement about them. Maybe someone in the future will not like the claimed hours early in your book and discount them. But again, it's your book.
 
School may be gone, but is the instructor still around? Do CFIs note the student name and/or cert number when logging their hours? Maybe you could get a copy of his/her old logs?

I’m an hour whore...:D
 
alfadog said:
Dual rec'd pre-PPL is not PIC time so what is the value of it? Reconstruct as you can and count your solo time as PIC and just carry on. If you can make it through your checkride in 20 hours dual from where you are now, you are doing really well.
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This.

Those hours are pretty useless now for the purposes of getting your Private.
 
Copy your old logbook into foreflight and then throw out the old logbook. If you get the order of those things wrong but the hours are correct, so what? You won't have your instructor signature in foreflight because foreflight didn't exist back then. Don't take credit for anything to a greater extent than you are sure you accomplished.

Your new CFI won't solo until you are ready regardless of your previous hours, so that's fine. You can also see his/her reaction to you having moved your old hours into foreflight and discarding the old logbook. You'll probably have enough hours to meet all the Part 61 requirements using only 2019+ hours by the time you are ready for your checkride. The minimums are not actually that much compared to what most people need, although you'll surely benefit somewhat from previous experience.
 
Chesterspal said:
This is what I'm going by. BTW: it is a big deal to me. I spent 30+ hours flying as a student and that still belongs to me.
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...And it will always belong to you where it matters most, i.e. in your memory of doing it. But how'z about we talk reality for moment. Reality is even if you had the logbook and therefore still had FAA qualified 'credit' for the hours, you would still very likely require just as many logbook hours to get prepared for the private pilot checkride as you would if you'd never been in plane before now. With only 30 hours logged and 30+ years since that time, at most we're talking 5 hours of flight time difference between you starting now from where you left off and someone else staring now who had never set foot inside an airplane before. And to be clear, that's a very optimistic assumption.

Put another way, I can assure you that once you take the checkride and get your private pilot certificate, you will not care about the 30 hours that aren't in your logbook. And speaking from experience I can also assure you that once you get to 1500+ hours, there is at least a moderate chance you won't care about any of the hours in your logbook so much so that you no longer bother to log hours at all.

Which is to say if you think you want to do it, just go do it and don't fret about what happened 30 years ago. Welcome to forum. Please keep us posted on your progress.
 
Chesterspal said:
I began my journey to become a PPL but had to give it up after my first solo.
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alfadog said:
Reconstruct as you can and count your solo time as PIC and just carry on. If you can make it through your checkride in 20 hours dual from where you are now, you are doing really well.
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Sounds to me like he just did his first solo and that was it. So, maybe what... a whopping .5 worth of total solo time?
 
I'm gonna take the opposing view. If he can find the logbook, it's KIND of a big deal with as few hours as he's got. Could mean something to insurance and at current prices 30 hours is probably nearly $4000 worth of flying if renting. That may be peanuts to some folks, but big money to others. Experience wise, the hours won't help that much for safety, but again, it's not worthless.
 
When you sign your log book, you don't promise to prove you flew those hours, you promise that the hours you indicate are true and correct. If you're not lying, then it must be true.

Here's what I would do. I wouldn't let anyone tell me I couldn't log those hours. I would put them in my logbook.

Get a new logbook and start with those 'lost' hours on the first line.

Now go to a flight school and begin your private lessons. The instructor will look at those hours and decide if you meet the requirements (i.e. hours, sign-offs, etc - obviously you wont for most) and they will then tell you if you need to fly more, if you need sign-offs etc., before cutting you loose.

The bottom line is, those hours may not count one bit towards the completion of your private, but they are your hours, and when you are finished, you will have whatever hours you flew to complete your private, plus those 30 hours.

SIMILAR STORY:... Many years ago when I was CFI-ing in Alaska, I had a guy who got into trouble with the FAA and they pulled all his certs and ratings and told him he had no fight time. He had to start over. He came to me, got his private, passed his check ride, then the next line entered "4500 hours from Logbook Number 1". I'm aware that the FAA was aware of this and it was never a problem. YMMV.

PJ
 
RyanShort1 said:
I'm gonna take the opposing view. If he can find the logbook, it's KIND of a big deal with as few hours as he's got. Could mean something to insurance and at current prices 30 hours is probably nearly $4000 worth of flying if renting. That may be peanuts to some folks, but big money to others. Experience wise, the hours won't help that much for safety, but again, it's not worthless.
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$4000 is a big number. You can't throw that kind of number around without citations. So, citation please. What exact specific facts do you base that opinion on?
 
If he trains at the flight school on my field it would be closer to $9,000. $210 for the plane and $85 for the instructor.
 
OP doesn't need any hours to start training again, and to solo. If OP quit right after the first solo then it's just hours for hours sake that are missing and it won't be apparent whether they are needed or not until right before the checkride when it's time to total them up. So worrying about the lost hours now seems like putting the cart before the horse.
 
Hello all. Thanks for the replies and the discussion. Much appreciated both pro and con.

I've sent an email to my local FAA office asking for advice. Will await their reply and report back.

I understand the hours may mean little to some in terms of current flying ability. I cannot just hop in a plane and continue on where I left off. However, I know much of what I did learn will start to come back once I get inside the cabin. If the desire is there to learn, it will all come back.

I did do what I believe was a "check ride" with a lady FAA tester at one point. Would there be a record of that other than just in my lost log book, I wonder?

As to my instructor, his name is on my solo certificate. I can contact the FAA, if it comes to that, to see if he is still around. Maybe he's still teaching. I recall he was quite upset when I told him I needed to stop.
 
Chesterspal said:
...

I did do what I believe was a "check ride" with a lady FAA tester at one point. Would there be a record of that other than just in my lost log book, I wonder?
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I seriously doubt you flew with anyone from the FAA if all you did was first solo. Chances are you had a pre-solo "stage check" with a more senior instructor at the school. The FAA will have no record of that or of any of your flying.

As to my instructor, his name is on my solo certificate. I can contact the FAA, if it comes to that, to see if he is still around. Maybe he's still teaching. I recall he was quite upset when I told him I needed to stop.
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33 years is a very long time but you can try searching if you have the name. Hopefully, it is an uncommon name (if it were mine, you would have no trouble). I doubt the FAA will give you any more info than you can find out at the site below...

https://amsrvs.registry.faa.gov/airmeninquiry/
 
Juliet Hotel said:
$4000 is a big number. You can't throw that kind of number around without citations. So, citation please. What exact specific facts do you base that opinion on?
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A local Cessna 150 rents for about $105/hr and one of the more reasonable flight schools charges $55hr for the instructor (Instructor sees $30 of that). I lowballed (!) it for possibly finding a better deal, but that would actually add up to $4,800 for those 30 hours, and I certainly know of more expensive options. And no, I'm not gonna advertise for the competition and show you their websites, but I can assure you if you want to PM, I can give you exact rates on websites.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
$4000 is a big number. You can't throw that kind of number around without citations. So, citation please. What exact specific facts do you base that opinion on?
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No offense but if you question $4k for 30.4 hours of dual then I guess you have not done any dual at a flight school in the last 10 years.
 
alfadog said:
No offense but if you question $4k for 30.4 hours of dual then I guess you have not done any dual at a flight school in the last 10 years.
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I wasn't questioning the going rates. I was questioning how anyone can know that a person they've never met with 30 hours in their logbook from 30 years ago will be able to get back into training and complete all the remaining required tasks and get themselves to where they can fly all the required maneuvers to test standards in just 10 hours. Call me closed minded but I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to pull that off.

Which means this person is going to end up with more than 40 hours in their logbook before their checkride. So even the logbook still existed and you could apply those 30 hours, they're still going to have do some portion of those hours over again. I would expect no less than 5 hours of dual to solo again and 10 wouldn't be unreasonable. If they didn't do any hood time 30 years, that will still need to be done. Probably didn't do any cross countries back then either. All of that is probably going to add up to 15 or 25 hours before its all done. I don't think it unreasonable to have to do 30-35 hours to get to the checkride.

So at most, having a log of those original 30 hours might save 5-10 hours of flight time that wouldn't have to be done over again. I know rental and instructor rates aren't what they used to be, but I have a hard time believing an extra 10 hours is going to cost $4k.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
I wasn't questioning the going rates. I was questioning how anyone can know that a person they've never met with 30 hours in their logbook from 30 years ago will be able to get back into training and complete all the remaining required tasks and get themselves to where they can fly all the required maneuvers to test standards in just 10 hours. Call me closed minded but I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to pull that off.

Which means this person is going to end up with more than 40 hours in their logbook before their checkride. So even the logbook still existed and you could apply those 30 hours, they're still going to have do some portion of those hours over again. I would expect no less than 5 hours of dual to solo again and 10 wouldn't be unreasonable. If they didn't do any hood time 30 years, that will still need to be done. Probably didn't do any cross countries back then either. All of that is probably going to add up to 15 or 25 hours before its all done. I don't think it unreasonable to have to do 30-35 hours to get to the checkride.

So at most, having a log of those original 30 hours might save 5-10 hours of flight time that wouldn't have to be done over again. I know rental and instructor rates aren't what they used to be, but I have a hard time believing an extra 10 hours is going to cost $4k.
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I think @RyanShort1 was saying that the present value of the 30.4 missing hours is $4k and that time has value for insurance purposes. I venture to say that most folks here are in agreement that as far as training, the missing time is NBD as he still needs all his solo time and will likely need enough new dual to meet minimum Part 61 reqs for the checkride without the missing time.
 
alfadog said:
I think @RyanShort1 was saying that the present value of the 30.4 missing hours is $4k and that time has value for insurance purposes. I venture to say that most folks here are in agreement that as far as training, the missing time is NBD as he still needs all his solo time and will likely need enough new dual to meet minimum Part 61 reqs for the checkride without the missing time.
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Ok but I guess I'm still not following. The missing hours have value when it comes to insurance. What is the OP going to need insurance for? Renters insurance is pretty cut and dry, I don't see having an extra $4k worth of flight time making all that much difference in rates. Certainly not $4k worth of difference.
 
The other part to keep in mind is that the examiner has to determine that the hours you put on your 8710 application are legit, or at least reasonable.

I would suggest logging what you have receipts for, line by line, with as much detail as you can (it probably won’t be more than the flight time as dual received). Put the receipt number or some other info identifying the record you have for that flight in the remarks section.

Also, keep your medical/student pilot certificate from that time as part of your records.

i recently had a Pilot come to me with his lost logbook scenario...his documentation sucked, and I probably wouldn’t have accepted it. Fortunately it was a moot point, as his flying was a train wreck, and he never was able together signed off for the check ride.
 
Read the OP last post. its clear he is stuck on the notion his prior experience will be a conduit to a heavily accelerated practical sign off. If i was a primary CFI I wouldnt touch this at all, especially as it pertains to the rag tag documentation from 1986 business. @MauleSkinner already provided an anecdote of how this is likely to go down.
 
bflynn said:
Photocopy the receipts and put them in a PDF. Based on that documentation, create a statement of your hours and total them. Have your signature on that notarized.
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I have seen the notarization comment before regarding log books.

Not sure what the value of that is, other than wasting more of his time and money??
 
hindsight2020 said:
Read the OP last post. its clear he is stuck on the notion his prior experience will be a conduit to a heavily accelerated practical sign off. If i was a primary CFI I wouldnt touch this at all, especially as it pertains to the rag tag documentation from 1986 business. @MauleSkinner already provided an anecdote of how this is likely to go down.
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As a flight instructor, this scenario wouldn't bother me one bit. We get students all the time with previous time in their logbooks. We have no way of verifying if it's true or not. We can only verify, 1. that they have the time logged to meet the requirement and 2. that they fly with the ability to pass that requirement.

In this OPs case, providing he met the 2 requirements I listed, I would sign him off and send him to the examiner. If the examiner then has a problem with it, we can discuss it.

I suppose if you lined 5 examiners up and gave them this problem, you'd probably get 6 different views of opinion. However, I can tell you that I would never send any pilot to an examiner if I did not believe they were going to pass, and I have never had a pilot fail a check ride.

PJ
 
hindsight2020 said:
Read the OP last post. its clear he is stuck on the notion his prior experience will be a conduit to a heavily accelerated practical sign off. If i was a primary CFI I wouldnt touch this at all, especially as it pertains to the rag tag documentation from 1986 business. @MauleSkinner already provided an anecdote of how this is likely to go down.
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How it’s “likely to go down” depends heavily on how the OP documents the time. I can’t speak for every examiner/inspector, but if he showed me a logbook with times and supporting data rather than a line entry that said “I flew 30 hours 30 years ago”, and his flight times met the requirements (the current instructor would need to have a signature behind all of the dual instruction requirements, as receipts don’t say what maneuvers were accomplished during the flight), there would be no problem doing the checkride.

As others have indicated, any instructor worth his salt is going to ensure that he’s competent.
 
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