How do you calculate night time for your logbook?

[Tolan]

Hey, I have a Transair logbook, and have recently started international IFR flights. There is a column for "Operational Conditions", one of those is "Night". During training, it was simple to calculate because we could just check VFR opening and closing times.

However, doing many flights a day, crossing timezones, how do you guys calculate how much Night IFR time you have done?

Thanks,
Tolan

[Reluctant737]

I just take note of the time the sun goes down, and +30 mins. The converse applies for sunrise. If I cannot see the sun, I guess! Swings and roundabouts, after a hundred hours it'll all tie in :ok:

Ad

[Henry VIII]

Suggest an electronic logbook. Simply insert apt ICAO code, timing in UTC... et voilà !

[planett]

Wild Assed Guess, or SWAG......Scientific WAG.

[Gary Lager]

If I land at 'night' (i.e. I think it's dark) then I log it as night. If I depart at night but land in daylight I log it as 'Day'. I do just scheduled shorthaul EU Ops so the numbers should even out oer time. Can't see that principle working for longhaul or ops with lots of night flying.

If you are flying on an IR, I don't think anyone really cares whether it's night or day anyway.

[Crossunder]

Keep it simple. It really doesn't matter; who cares how many hours night flying we do? Just fill inn an hour here and 20 minutes there! :ok:

[Mshamba]

My reasonably priced butler called "safelog" is doing that job for me ;)
Otherwise there would be always the golden rule of thumb rule :ok:

[bucket_and_spade]

I just make a judgement call and make a flight either night or day depending on what the majority of it was - life's too short to start trying to split it up. Once you've met the night requirements for early licence issue it becomes irrelevant anyway!

B&S

[latetonite]

After 10.000 hrs, I do not fill in nighttime. Does it matter?

[ACMS]

GUESS.

Close enough is good enough.

:ok:


( no one is going to check anyway )

[Kestrel_Stu]

Just guess! I also tend to log it based on the conditions of the majority of the flight, should even out about right in the end.

Or you could get a fancy electronic logbook which will do it accurately based on times/date/city pair, but I'm too tight to pay for that :p

[FE Hoppy]

Night:
The period between the end of evening civil
twilight and the beginning of morning civil
twilight, or such other period between sunset
and sunrise as may be prescribed by the
appropriate Authority.

[roljoe]

A friend of mine was using this rule...

When I remove my sunglasses...this is the start of night flying...and the reverse for day :E

[misd-agin]

When I can't see the instruments without light it's night time. That's often long after the sun is over the horizon when heading westbound.

If you're doing international long haul flights you'll get more than enough 'night time'. Suit yourself as to how you log it. Just be reasonable, and be able to justify how you log it.

[Old Smokey]

It's a bit high tech, but here goes -

When it's light, I log it as Day, and

When it's dark, I log it as Night.

As I said, a bit high tech, but it works for me:ok:

Regards,

Old Smokey

[galaxy flyer]

OS

After so many erudite discussions on performance, certification rules and downright great experiences, your simple explanation on what is "night" leaves me breathless. :ok:

J_T will be proud.

GF

[NigelOnDraft]

If you need Night, IF, P1, ME / Autolands towards a Licence / rating / currency, then know the rules and log it accurately... If not, then a wild / best guess :D

NoD

[john_tullamarine]

simple explanation on what is "night" leaves me breathless

simple jargon rule-based matter... as a chemical engineer colleague once put it "when I'm with engineers, I talk chemistry, when I'm with chemists, I talk engineering, and when I'm with chemical engineers, we just talk about women ... "

[roljoe]

J. T....+1 :ok:

[fireflybob]

Bear in mind that sunset and sunrise have to be calculated at surface level !

[fingal flyer]

I think OLD SMOKEY pretty much hit the nail on the head.And if the sector is a bit of both just log it as a bit of both.

[CJ Driver]

I agree with all the comments to the effect that any reasonable estimate is sufficient to log time at night, especially after you have ticked enough boxes to collect all the licences you want. One requirement that does not necessarily go away (depending on your operating regime) is night currency for takeoff and landing. Even after many thousands of hours you will still want to know when you most recently performed a night takeoff or landing, so you need to count those. Of course, as a previous poster said, if you are logging the takeoff as night, you can fairly safely log the flight time as night as well.