Transitioning to electronic logbook

[Matthew]

Years ago I started moving to electronic, so I began by entering every flight in my logbook. That took a very long time. I spent a few hours a day and still hadn’t made much progress and eventually gave up. Now I’m thinking about re-starting that project.

Late last summer I filled out IACRA for a checkride. Would that be a good starting point? Can I “pre load” hours into all the different categories and use that as a starting point?

Or is there an easier way?

 

[RussR]

Years ago I started moving to electronic, so I began by entering every flight in my logbook. That took a very long time. I spent a few hours a day and still hadn’t made much progress and eventually gave up. Now I’m thinking about re-starting that project.

Late last summer I filled out IACRA for a checkride. Would that be a good starting point? Can I “pre load” hours into all the different categories and use that as a starting point?

Or is there an easier way?

You can enter the data any way you want.
1. Every flight, line by line, like you've been doing. This is the most detailed way.
2. "Starting totals" - many logbooks will have a field to enter something like that in. So, you started with 500 ASEL, 100 AMEL, 450 PIC, whatever, etc. This is the easiest way, but also the least detailed for later use.
3. Break it up by airframe - if you know you have 100 hours in Cessna 172's, for example, you make one entry with say today's date, C172, 100.0 hours, etc. Then do the same for PA28, TBM700, whatever. This is kind of a middle ground between the two.

If Option 1 just isn't going to get done, then I'd recommend Option 3. That way you can still break time down by models for other purposes, like insurance paperwork or job applications.

 

[Pinecone]

You can also start by putting in starting numbers. Then as you enter a page at a time, you can change the starting numbers to have the totals be correct.

I did the line by line to electronic a long time ago. It took a while, but that way I have all the info in one place. Without doing this you lose all the info about what airplanes you have flown, what airports, etc.

 

[Brad W]

A few years back...I think it was during the covid lockdown shenanigans... I started entering my logbook into a spreadsheet, line by line. I'm only just North of 300 hours so it's not such a great task for me as it would be for some, but still, it's quite a few line items. I did it mostly in the evenings while the wife had something on TV

Since then I added tabs for airports visited and aircraft flown, I've also played around with graphs for hours by year and a few other things

For the list of aircraft flown, I got on a rat trail researching each tail number to find the actual models, horsepower, where they are now, and such...and in most cases I found the serial numbers of each aircraft logged. I was able to clarify my list of types flown, to actual model...cessna 150M for example, instead of just C150 as it was logged. That also lead me onto a few interesting finds online, such as a magazine article about a lady who soloed in an Aeronca Champ in 1960. The same Champ that I would attempt to fly a few decades later. She later went on to win the Wright Bros Master Pilot Award

Sometime later I exported that spreadsheet over to myflightbook.com, to play around with that. It offers some nice features, including a map of visited airports.

As a rusty pilot, I've found it very useful for daydreaming and such. Just yesterday, the thread here about shortest distance cross country had me breaking out the spreadsheet and myflightbook.com to find mine. It's a little bit fun to have the data, so I would encourage you to continue working on line-by-line entry

 

[Initial Fix]

When I went electronic I just went back to my ppl and put a line with the totals to that date.

 

[Matthew]

When I went electronic I just went back to my ppl and put a line with the totals to that date.

I completed my IACRA back in August for my IR checkride. That was a pretty comprehensive summary and might be a good starting point.

I’m going to find out where I left off, though, and see how many pages it will take me to get caught up.

 

[Matthew]

I still have my online account with myflightbook. Looks like I have about 10 pages left to enter from where I left off. I did take a lot of time off from flying so some of those pages cover a lot of calendar time.

 

[Matthew]

I've been adding one or two pages/day from my paper logbook into me e-book.

I'm up to 27 different airplanes so far, and I think I have at least 2 more to go. It's been interesting looking back at those flights and reading the comments. I forgot how good a time I had on a few of those when I took my kids out for lunch or to visit their cousin for breakfast.

I'm finally closing in on the last 4 or so pages, so maybe by next weekend I'll get there. I'm getting bogged down in all my IR training flights right now.

Good times.

 

[Jim K]

I grouped mine, too. The first several pages were the same airplane and airport for every flight, so I stuck those all together. Only downside was my date tracking isn't accurate for those first few months if I want to search by "hours flown by month" or "day of the year". Not a huge loss. I did break out any time I went to a different airport because I find it fun to track those. MFB will produce lots of different fun graphs if you have all that stuff in there. After my checkride, there was still a bunch of local flights in that same plane, so those got grouped as well. It really sped up the process when most pages can be reduced to one or two entries. After another month or so I started flying more trips and in different tail numbers, so at that point I switched over to individual entries for each flight.

I still keep a paper log I consider to be my "official" record, so i worry less about keeping dates straight in MFB. Often a week long trip will be four lines in the paper log but condensed to one online. The electronic log is SO useful though for filling out iacra and insurance forms, as well as tracking ifr & night currency. Obviously dates for flights with approaches or night landings are handled more carefully.

 

[simie1]

I recently did it. Went with option 3 above. That still took a lot of time, and a few details get left out of course, but glad I finally did it. All electronic now but I miss paper log books. Something satisfying about them…..

 

[Pinecone]

I recently did it. Went with option 3 above. That still took a lot of time, and a few details get left out of course, but glad I finally did it. All electronic now but I miss paper log books. Something satisfying about them…..

I keep both. Electronic is primary, but also keep paper.

 

[Matthew]

I finished a few days ago, I transferred all entries from paper to electronic. It was tedious, but since I had already started it sometime in the past I was already about halfway there.

It was fun to read my comments and remember the flights, especially the ones with my kids, or nephews, or other family members.

I found about 30 different tail numbers, too.

I’m going to keep both logs active, the e-log does a good job of tracking currency and makes a great backup, but the paper will be my primary.

 

[RussR]

I recently did it. Went with option 3 above. That still took a lot of time, and a few details get left out of course, but glad I finally did it. All electronic now but I miss paper log books. Something satisfying about them…..

I agree. Back when I was just flying as a hobby, I always enjoyed that ritual at the end of the flight of filling in my paper logbook. The feel of the paper, the pen, visibly adding in another hour or so of an amazing experience.

Then I became a CFI and a pro pilot and although I love the flying just as much, filling out the paper logbook lost its magic and became tedious. I hung on for several years, but at some point just stopped.