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Flying for Fun

July 26, 2013/in Personal stories/by studentpltnews

Flight school, albeit fun, can be a real drag. I can recall fretting over the next “turns around a point” lesson for the fourth time. Don’t get me wrong, any chance you have to get in the air and burn some 100LL is a great day, but looking at the upcoming lesson outline would often […]

Going paperless with your logbook

July 17, 2013/in Tips and technique/by studentpltnews

Flying for Fun

July 26, 2013/in Personal stories/by studentpltnews

Going paperless with your logbook

July 17, 2013/in Tips and technique/by studentpltnews

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Flying for Fun

July 26, 2013/in Personal stories/by studentpltnews

The cure for my boring outlook on the next lesson came one day from my instructor who also wasn’t thrilled about having to teach the same lesson to four students on the same day. He introduced me to the marvel of the airport cafe.

Upon my arrival at the airport, my instructor commented “you want to do lunch?” My first thought was that he was asking me on a date. “You’re really not my type, but I could go for some fast food before we head up.” Little did I know, lunch was actually going to take place as part of the flight lesson.

Scheduling a three hour flight block, we took off with the intent of doing some basic maneuvers. Heading out to the practice area, we started on the boring stuff: turns around a point, turn to heading, climbs, descents, etc. Leveling off after ten minutes of doing what seemed to be random maneuvers, he asked me where we were. As basic as that may sound, I wasn’t exactly prepared to answer at this point.

Looking out the window, I didn’t see anything that looked familiar. And my instructor’s grin indicated that I was on my own to figure it out. Dialing up the ADF (starting to show my age), I turned to a heading that would take us back at our home airport. He promptly put an “Inop” sticker over the indicator and told my to try again using the visual landmarks around us.

Admittedly frustrated, I reluctantly consulted the chart. I found the one airport not too far from home base next to a large river and concluded that we’ve wandered over near Middletown Ohio (MWO). After locating the appropriate frequency, we made a position report. I barely released the PTT switch when my instructor pulled his favorite lever: the throttle. “There goes your engine. Now what?”

Best glide, turn towards the field, verify wind direction, make a plan, communicate…not bad for a newbie. It wasn’t my best landing and I ended up using 3800 of the 4000 feet available, but we got it down.

“Taxi over behind that old row of hangars.” Now I’m confused, but he definitely knows something I don’t. After shutting down the engine, I notice a gate in the fence and a Frisch’s Big Boy restaurant on the other side. That’s when it hit me that we had a fly-out lunch. There was nothing special about this particular greasy spoon, and if you were in a car, you probably wouldn’t even consider stopping. But traveling there by airplane made it special and we accomplished a host of valuable learning experiences in the process.

To this day, my favorite flying missions are food related. I’ve become a biscuits and gravy connoisseur at airport diners and an expert on blueberry pancakes. And it was all because I had a creative flight instructor who may have sensed that I needed something a little different to maintain my motivation.

So my challenge to students and CFIs is to be creative. There’s a lot that can be accomplished in the course of a fun flight to have lunch.

Going paperless with your logbook

July 17, 2013/in Tips and technique/by studentpltnews

Over the past 3 years pilots have been quickly transitioning to a paperless cockpit, using the iPad as an electronic preflight and in-flight resource. The iPad allows pilots to reliably organize and display sectional charts and airport directories, view GPS moving maps, and organize PDF documents all in one location. Student pilots have found this to be a great resource too, using it to keep all the tools for learning at their fingertips right alongside the required navigation charts. In this move towards a paperless cockpit, I’m also seeing more and more pilots transition their pilot logbooks to an electronic format, instead of relying on the traditional paper books.

I personally made the move to an electronic logbook about 6 months ago after 13 years of flying, and there’s no turning back for me. Here are a few of the benefits I’ve realized:

Ease of data entry – With the popular logbook programs available today, you can enter the data on your smartphone, iPad or computer, and all the information stays synced between the devices. Before when I relied on the paper book I found myself forgetting to add times right after a flight. Now I just enter the times right on my iPhone as I walk away from the airplane.
Data security – Logbook records are extremely important for pilots, containing irreplaceable details on all your flights. I’ve known several pilots who have lost their logbooks over the years, and it caused many headaches when they went to apply for professional flying jobs. With an electronic logbook your data is backed up online and very secure.
Instant flight analysis – One of my favorite features of an electronic logbook is the application’s ability to analyze your flight times. You can instantly determine your landing, night or instrument currency, and get reminders about upcoming requirements, like a flight review.
Flight time reporting – Electronic logbooks allow you to easily manipulate your flight data, making it easy to see how much time you have in a particular type of airplane, or how many times your visited a particular airport. The reporting functions allow you to quickly export this data, which you’ll find particularly useful down the road if needed for insurance applications when flying larger airplanes.

There are several electronic logbook programs available, and the best one I’ve come across is LogTen Pro from Coradine software. This program runs great on an iPad or iPhone, and is also available for Mac computer users. It’s a very intuitive program, and even includes a way for your instructor to sign the logbook electronically on an iPhone or iPad. Another option is a program called Logbook Pro, which offers PC, Android and Kindle versions, in addition to those for iPhone and iPad.

I think it’s a great idea for new student pilots to start out from scratch with an electronic logbook, since it’ll keep your data organized and secure from the day you start flying. If you’re a brand new student pilot and and want to test out the concept first, consider logging your times in a free Microsoft Excel or Google Docs spreadsheet. Then once you decide you like the idea of logging your times electronically, it’s an easy step to later import that data into a more capable program like LogTen Pro.

One concern I often hear comes from pilots who have lots of time logged in paper books, and think they need to go back and re-enter all their past flights line by line into the new electronic logbook. While you can certainly do that, my recommendation is to go back and just enter the last 6 – 12 months, which will establish a good recent history in the program. Regardless of how many flights you decide to transfer (if any at all), make sure to enter the totals from each column in your paper logbook as the starting numbers in the new electronic version, so the cumulative times remain accurate.

So let’s hear from you, which type of logbook are you currently using?

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Flying for Fun

Going paperless with your logbook

Flying for Fun

Going paperless with your logbook

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Flying for Fun

Going paperless with your logbook

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