Logging hours - UTC/Local?

[Okavango]

Hi. It recently struck me when the clocks changed how important it might be to have consistent times in your log book. When I did my PPL, I'm sure the instructor just logged local time and the current tech logs of the aircraft I fly generally seem to follow local time. However - in your professional records everything should be UTC? How important is it to make sure everything is in UTC? Seems to be a bit of a rats nest to sort out with some using British Summer Time and others UTC.

[Agaricus bisporus]

Hours tend to consist of sixty evenly sized minutes regardless of the time zone you are in. It is conventional to record the length of the sortie in hours and mins/decimals (in the appropriate column/s), plus details of date, airframe, other pilot, sortie and perhaps a breakdown of special conditions. How does a time zone come into it?

No comprende.

[Whirlygig]

I just mark a small L by the times to denote local and Z when it's Zulu. Yes, all times should be UTC but local seems acceptable.

Makes my flying in Washington State look like night flying though :} :}

Ag. Bis - JAA logbooks have take off/landing times columns as well as the time of the sortie so yes, it does matter.

Cheers

Whirls

[mad_jock]

It doesn't really seem to matter for the training side of things.

The CAA is quite happy for tech logs in training schools that are not being used for CoA work to be in local time. The amount of mistakes that folk would do if they wern't in local time.

JUst record the times that you put in the tech log and if you want to be really really safe you can use the L or z as required.

When your flying AoC work all times are in Zulu. Its very rare to hear the words UTC used outside France. They only changed it to UTC cause France insisted after stumping up the money for a new atomic clock.

[welliewanger]

GMT/UTC/Z whatever it's called... it's only really useful if your flight crosses time zones. Then it becomes quite useful, unless you really did land before you took off. But this only happens in aircraft equipped with the flux capacitor mod.

[hollingworthp]

On a slight side note - I would heartily recommend logging your flight time in decimal rather than hh:mm as it is MUCH easier to add up the columns.

[BillieBob]

In the UK, there is no legal requirement to record departure or arrival times - just the duration of the flight. Consequently, if you decide to record times they can be in any time zone you like.

If you wish to comply with the requirements of JAR-FCL, then the times of departure and arrival must be entered in UTC.

The EASA Implementing Rules leave the issue of logging flights to the individual national authorities and so the provisions of the ANO will, presumably, remain law in this area after 2012