I just spent the better part of an evening getting my logbook into electronic form.
Using Pilotica because it's free and has web and iOs app access that syncs automagically.
First, if you're contemplating this the best way to do it is to set up an account, put your first logbook entry in, export that logbook to an excel document. Now, open up that excel document. You'll notice headers and your entry. Reorganize those headers so they're in the same order as your paper logbook, hide the ones you don't use, then delete the first entry, and start putting everything else in. Once you're done and reasonably sure it's correct, save the document and import it into Pilotica.
Pilotica's interface is set up to enter one flight at a time, fill in lots of boxes, then click save. You don't want to do this for your hundreds of flights, doing it in the spreadsheet is much faster and more intuitive for entering an entire logbook IMO.
I have a couple of concerns/grievances of course...
The web interface lets you select how many entries to view on each page, however if you click something else and go back to it, it resets to the default of 10. My paper logbook had 13... they did have a button for this but it reset each time I went in to edit something. I check for errors by looking at the totals at the bottom of each page and going through the entries on that page only if it doesn't match... this made the process a little annoying as it throws everything out of whack. I also had to add a couple of blank log entries in pilotica so that the extra lines CFIs used to write extra stuff in would sync up properly.... not the application's fault just a note I guess. The number of entries per page really ought to be persistent though.
Pilotica tracks night and day landings separately... which is fine except my paper logbook did not. I filled it all in as close as I could remember. I did note something odd though. When I looked at the currency page it showed that I had 0 night landings and some number for day currency. I knew I'd flown at night recently so I found the incorrect entry and fixed it... when I did I noticed that it subtracted a landing from my day currency and added one to night. I thought night landings counted towards day currency or was I wrong? Not really a big difference in my case but worth noting.
Also went to look at the airports I've been to on the map... I immediately noticed quite a few missing. The pattern was quickly evident... all the 4 letter ones starting with K.... KEAU, KRNH, KUBE, KLUM, etc were showing up but the 3 letter ones like 2I0, Y14, 21D did not. Something with how Pilotica reads the routing information? Again not a major thing but a note...
Also going back to entry... not only do you have to make entries one at a time but to delete one you have to click it, then delete. For mass entry sometimes mistakes happen and there seems to be no way to delete a bunch of entries at once. If you accidentally imported a file twice you'd be at it all day(or better probably just give up and make a new account). They really need some more powerful editing features.
Overall though, not bad. At least I can export this into a CSV that(I hope) can be imported into some other electronic logbook system if I want to change in the future.
Using Pilotica because it's free and has web and iOs app access that syncs automagically.
First, if you're contemplating this the best way to do it is to set up an account, put your first logbook entry in, export that logbook to an excel document. Now, open up that excel document. You'll notice headers and your entry. Reorganize those headers so they're in the same order as your paper logbook, hide the ones you don't use, then delete the first entry, and start putting everything else in. Once you're done and reasonably sure it's correct, save the document and import it into Pilotica.
Pilotica's interface is set up to enter one flight at a time, fill in lots of boxes, then click save. You don't want to do this for your hundreds of flights, doing it in the spreadsheet is much faster and more intuitive for entering an entire logbook IMO.
I have a couple of concerns/grievances of course...
The web interface lets you select how many entries to view on each page, however if you click something else and go back to it, it resets to the default of 10. My paper logbook had 13... they did have a button for this but it reset each time I went in to edit something. I check for errors by looking at the totals at the bottom of each page and going through the entries on that page only if it doesn't match... this made the process a little annoying as it throws everything out of whack. I also had to add a couple of blank log entries in pilotica so that the extra lines CFIs used to write extra stuff in would sync up properly.... not the application's fault just a note I guess. The number of entries per page really ought to be persistent though.
Pilotica tracks night and day landings separately... which is fine except my paper logbook did not. I filled it all in as close as I could remember. I did note something odd though. When I looked at the currency page it showed that I had 0 night landings and some number for day currency. I knew I'd flown at night recently so I found the incorrect entry and fixed it... when I did I noticed that it subtracted a landing from my day currency and added one to night. I thought night landings counted towards day currency or was I wrong? Not really a big difference in my case but worth noting.
Also went to look at the airports I've been to on the map... I immediately noticed quite a few missing. The pattern was quickly evident... all the 4 letter ones starting with K.... KEAU, KRNH, KUBE, KLUM, etc were showing up but the 3 letter ones like 2I0, Y14, 21D did not. Something with how Pilotica reads the routing information? Again not a major thing but a note...
Also going back to entry... not only do you have to make entries one at a time but to delete one you have to click it, then delete. For mass entry sometimes mistakes happen and there seems to be no way to delete a bunch of entries at once. If you accidentally imported a file twice you'd be at it all day(or better probably just give up and make a new account). They really need some more powerful editing features.
Overall though, not bad. At least I can export this into a CSV that(I hope) can be imported into some other electronic logbook system if I want to change in the future.
It is well worth it, and the the feedback for additional fields, etc are always answered promptly..
