Originally Posted by
18greens
I've started! Any tips on structure, column headings etc....How to accommodate Sim time.
Well I'll tell you how I've done it; whether that is good or bad I'm unsure - but it works for me.
The main spreadsheet has three pages: logbook, calculations, and summary.
Logbook page looks, well, rather like a logbook. First columns are Date (hidden column turning that into a digital date), type, reg, generic type (useful as I'm not interested in hours in C172Ns, but I am interested in time in C172s), PiC, Other seat, from, to, details, take-offs, landings, approaches, departure time (hh:mm format), arrival time (ditto), hidden column calculating flight time as a decimal, visible columns showing hours and minutes separately (just works better that way in Excel), Then I have multiple columns for the usual totals - and in Excel you can obviously have as many as you want, rather than the limitations of your paper logbook. In my case, my paper logbook has 12 columns but my electronic logbook has 20 - it's useful to keep track of things like FAA X-country and high performance time, but no need to clutter up my main logbook with it.
I find that having values in the columns as hours to 3 decimal places works well as you get no rounding errors, totals are all automated at the top of the page with a simple formula to turn that n.nnn hours to hours and minutes. Select all of that as a formatted "print area" to make it easy to print out. To the right I have various automated columns that keep track of things like Cessna hours, single seat hours, vintage taildragger hours as I occasionally get asked these things and it doesn't need to be visible in the main body.
Second page is calculations - it works out things like hours on each generic type, approaches in the last 182 days for my FAA IR, take-offs and landings in the last 90 days... That isn't visible to anybody but me and is happily scruffy but functional.
Third page is formatted as a 1 page of A4 to be printed out as a full logbook summary. From it you have "at a glance" hours in my main types, classes, and roles (e.g. instructor, tailwheel, single seaters, Piper singles), Separate FAA and EASA totals as they reckon things differently, dates of my medical, CofV, BFRs, rating expiries, visa and vaccination expiries with it automated to turn dates running out in the next 3 months orange, and expired red. A couple of boxes with manually updated / entered information like aeroplanes I've flown first flights on, licence numbers and ratings, dates of exam passes, ejector seat time - stuff that belongs in a flying CV (which in effect that page is) but not in the main tabulated logbook part. Essentially everything there
Thing is, create something simple that works, start populating it, then start complicating it with the stuff that matters to you. But a good robust basic structure from the start helps a lot. Use Excel's automation as much as you can.so that ideally you just enter data and it all ripples through - and can tweak the code from time to time when you want it to work out something new.
G