excelpilotlogbook.com

[sm85]

Hello all..
I was just about to create my own spreadsheet to keep track of my time when I came across this website Excel Pilot Logbook | A Free and easy way to keep track of your flights (http://excelpilotlogbook.com) .. does anyone have any experience using the free template they have available? I want to know if there are any qwerks or things that might trip up before putting my faith in it,, any other suggestions for logging flight time in ms excel would be appreciated also
Thanks
:ok:

[mfalcon]

I've recently moved to using an online system instead of Excel - logbook.aero. So far it appears excellent, and means I can check on hours etc from anywhere (rather than just on the PC).


And no, I am not related or linked to the site, just like using it!

[Genghis the Engineer]

Interesting.

I wrote and use my own logbook in Excel. Unsurprisingly perhaps, it's extremely similar to the one at that link - as presumably he and I were both trying to solve basically the same problems with the same tool.

I don't plan to stop using my paper logbook and it's a moot point which is backing which up, but I find Excel an excellent tool for the task.

You're welcome to a copy of mine to play with it you want to drop me a PM with your email address, but I'm sure that one is as good as mine, and with either, as it's in Excel you can just muck about with it to tailor it to your own exact requirements.

The biggest problem with Excel, and its a pretty trivial one, is that it doesn't handle minutes well in calculations. Entering time and date is fine - but what I do in mine is then work in 3 places past the decimal in all the calculations (so 1.5 = an hour and a half for example), then wrote a simple algorithm to turn that into hours and minutes in two columns wherever I need totals outputs to that level of accuracy.

I don't know what the other version does, but I found it worked best to run across three sheets - one for the tabulated logbook, a second for the calculations, and a third which is the summary page for display and printing if anybody wants a logbook summary.

G

[sm85]

mfalcon,
I had a look at logbook.aero it really does look like an excellent system, but for my needs I think i will persevere with excel and backing up on drop box for a little while, if it doesn't work well for me I will probably consider other options.

I'm also investing in a new paper logbook - If anyone has a particularly good logbook they would recommend I am all ears :)

[riverrock83]

I'm another who uses paper and logbook.aero. I was using a spreadsheet and the guy at logbook.aero imported it for me into his website. You can export back out again, so every now and again I'll do an export so that if the site has a problem I wont lose it all.

Time is awkward in excel but my old one did it ok.
I put date, start and end times as different columns, with the time custom formatted to hh:mm.
Then doing Maths on it seemed to work (so total airborne time = end - start, etc.) so long as you keep setting the formatting.

Slightly annoying when doing totals which is maybe what you're doing G? in that once you get to 24 hours it makes it up into a day, rather than saying you have flown 24 hours. To change it back to hours you need to multiply by 24 (which will give you hours in decimal), then you need further manipulation to convert the decimals into minutes.

[Wayne B]

I'm the creator of Logbook.aero - Online pilot logbook (http://logbook.aero), and it's great to see a couple of users posting here.

Riverrock83, you can total the hours in excel by setting the cell format to custom and changing it from hh:mm to [hh]:mm - this will display, for example, 24:30 instead of 00:30.

[Tone]

For info; in Excel if you need to sum columns of hours & mins format the individual cells as hh:mm. Then format the total cell as [h]:mm. This forces it to sum in hours instead of its horrible trick of subtracting 24 hours for every day it sees.

[Heston]

KISS. Paper log book, use spare columns for things I want to keep track of (like instructional time). Photocopy and photograph to memory stick or HDD for back-up. Fag packet for adding up totals when I want to. That's it.

[Wayne B]

I would be very surprised if paper logbooks (or anything using paper) are still around in 5-10 years. If you're planning on using paper logbooks for the next 20, 30 or 40 years then you might need to start stocking up on spares now before they go out of print :)

And home PCs won't be around for much longer than paper (for Excel users!).

[Genghis the Engineer]

Writer and futorologist Arthur C Clarke once described the human being as a "paper wasting animal". A very large proportion of his predictions were very accurate!

We'll still all be using paper in 20 years for all sorts of things - as well as the latest technology, not instead.

And anyhow, tempting 'though it is, I'm not going to hang a roll of iPads in my smallest room.


Both the joy and frustration of modern life is that we have more choice of technologies than ever before. The skill of surviving it is to pick the right technologies for yourself. Good manners is to accept that other people's right technologies are not necessarily the same as yours.

G

N.B. Anybody who PMd me asking for a copy of my Excel logbook spreadsheet, should have it by now.

[Piper.Classique]

I'm running my own spreadsheet, but the free one offered here looked fine to me. I use open office, which offers rather good time format options and allows unlimited hours without turning them in to days.

Once a page I copy to a paper logbook the items catered for on that logbook, which has various signatures for theings like the hour with instructor and such. The spreadsheet is in dropbox.

Gooddaysir may of course do as he wishes, but I fail to see the need for gratuitous rudeness.

[TheChitterneFlyer]

For the Excel geeks out there I have an interesting (modified) SUMPRODUCT formula that will SUM anything you like within a table. You can filter any date range you wish, or, for any particular aircraft type, or, the summation of Instrument Flying for any date range you might wish to enter. Anything and everything you want; it depends upon how you want to set it up!


For one of the calculations the formula looks like this; which calculates the total flight time for a start date and end date for a given pilot name and aircraft type. Your table might contain several thousand entries, nonetheless, it works a treat!


=SUMPRODUCT(--('FLIGHT LOG'!$A$2:$A$34>=$A$2),--('FLIGHT LOG'!$A$2:$A$34<=$B$2),--('FLIGHT LOG'!$B$2:$B$34=$D$7),--('FLIGHT LOG'!$E$2:$E$34=C8),'FLIGHT LOG'!$H$2:$H$34)


I have a tutorial file for anyone who wants it... drop me a PM.


Ciao
TCF

[ZK-MAX]

Nice to see people on the other side of the world making use of the ol' excel pilot logbook! :)

[robin]

I would be very surprised if paper logbooks (or anything using paper) are still around in 5-10 years.

I have a lot of electronic files on tape, CD etc none of which are accessible.
Strange that we are able to read papyrus scroll from 4000 years ago, or go to the Public Records office and read the logbooks of combat pilots from WW2 yet I have a load of stuff that I though would replace paper output that is unusable.

As I've got older I trust paper (well stored) more than electronic files and my logbooks going back 40-odd years are well-loved friends. They will be my treasured possessions until the end.

I can't ever see electronic media ever replacing them and I hope to be flying for many more years

[wb9999]

Considering how quickly iPods came into fashion and then out again, and gadgets like Netbooks, it wouldn't be unexpected for iPads and tablets to go out of fashion in a few years. So what will pilots be using in the future for navigating when iPads and tablets are no longer in use?

[bartonflyer]

You never know, perhaps they'll start looking out of the window again?

[wb9999]

You never know, perhaps they'll start looking out of the window again?

I recently flew with somebody who was navigating by map only (no iPad or tablet), and he spent more time looking at the map than out of the window.

[Genghis the Engineer]

I noticed at Popham at the weekend that the more technologically advanced spotters have eschewed the traditional policemen's notebook, and are now writing everybody's registrations down on iPads.

G

[wb9999]

It always surprises me how slowly GA adopts new technology. I started using a GPS 15 years ago, and it's only in the last couple of years that it's no longer frowned upon by the majority. And paper logbooks still being the overwhelming norm.