Logbook entry: actual instrument time
Most of my time is in airliners on autopilot although I'm ***lucky*** to fly a 727 in my present job and do quite a lot of hand flying, because our autopilot isn't the greatest on the ILS, we usually hand fly it from glide slope capture. I also hand fly many departures. (We are a part 91 operation VIP and operate from Africa mainly to Europe, Africa, MES and we used to do several flights a year to the USA but this seems to have slowed a bit, we even went to China last year). I am operating with a FAA ATP validated in the country, we do our PCs in Orlando.
I've never been sure what the regulators want to see in the logbook column "Actual Instrument".
How do you guys calculate how much time to write up in this column? I mean, the entire flight is conducted under IFR whether we hand fly it or the autopilot flies it. What is the purpose of this column?
Side note: We never used to log the number of landings as it wasn't a requirement in the old days, then I got a job in Europe in 2000, and they wanted to know how many landings I did for the JAA validation, it was a major mission to go back through all my logbooks and guess how many landings I did.
BTW mods if this is in the wrong section, please move it.