UAS flying hours
 

Hi all,

I have 78 flying hours on the Grob Tutor, and have completed EFT, as part of a UAS. I was wondering if anyone with good knowledge of military hours conversion would be able to advise me on the following matters.

As civilians log ‘blocks time’, how much time do you add per flight to your civilian logbook?

Do you put all flights in as ‘PUT’? And can examinations be logged as ‘P1/S’?

CAP2254 states that UAS flying hours can only be accredited for a LAPL. Is there any scope at all for any Tutor flying to count toward an SEP rating, or perhaps be used toward a PPL in combination with civilian training?

Thanks all

Only an ATO can tell you what you'll need for a CAA PPL, but it will all count for an FAA private, and if your looking to go commercial in the future that would be an acceptable private to start from.

Jirwin1: (From a colleague who understands the current situation)

This depends on your specific circumstances. There are some UAS students who are claiming to ‘have completed EFT’ - they haven’t, they have flown the UAS syllabus and have to go down the LAPL credit route. However, there are some post IOT regular officers who were sent to UAS to complete EFT on the Tutor rather than Prefect. They then go to MEPT/Rotary etc… if you can evidence that you completed EFT in this way then you can do down the EFT graduate credit route direct to PPL, although you might still need to build the required PIC hours due to lack of solo on EFT.

None - CAP2254 crediting of time specifically does not allow addition of taxi time - once you have a licence you should maintain a separate civilian logbook and log chock times.

PUT or PIC as appropriate, no PICUS allowed for military flights.

Are you a serving officer? If so, please send me a PM and I will direct you to an expert in these matters.

If you simply want to fly recreationally for now, the easy fix is the UK National Private Pilots Licence, or NPPL, with an SSEA (Simple Single Engined Aeroplanes) rating. Have a look at page 5 of this document http://www.nationalprivatepilotslice...20REV%2011.pdf for the allowances. Basically all of your hours count, you just need to pass the tests.

UK FCL, the ICAO compliant licencing system is a mess much in need of sorting out right now, and the CAA is trying to - albeit slowly. In the meantime however, that will get you in the system, able to fly most light aeroplanes, and you can then work out an elegant route to higher licences as and when you need them in slower time.

My guess is that you'll need 5-10hrs training, plus groundschool to get you through the different aeroplane type, different civilian ways of doing some things, etc. But it should be quite painless and most flying schools can do it. I wouldn't worry about taxiing allowables, you comfortably exceed the minima anyhow, and just need to do enough civilian instruction to learn your way through the NST and GST.

G

Thank you very much. I am not a serving officer, but have just been a UAS student. They do now offer formal EFT on UAS, and have done away with the old UAS syllabus. It is slightly counter intuitive how you can go to 57 Sqn, complete EFT, and be eligible for a PPL - yet you can complete EFT on a UAS (have twice the amount of 'live' flying hours, and much more solo time), and only be eligible for a LAPL.

- Are you sure? My squadron boss seemed to believe that you can log 'blocks time', as the Tutor's are G registered Part-21 aircraft, it would follow that you can adopt the civilian interpretation of 'flight time' as opposed to the military one, as after all, they are civilian registered aircraft.

Thank you very much for the info, it's much appreciated!

Thank you so much - this info is invaluable for my colleagues and me. You're right about the UK FCL/ICAO compliant licencing system, fingers crossed for a more straightforward accreditation process in the future!

Thanks so much!

If you have completed the EFT course ,whether it is on a UAS or not then this makes you an EFT graduate ( see terminology in CAP 2254).

Do you have an entry in your service logbook along the lines of an end of course summary for EFT.

If so I would seek the credits Available to an EFT graduate!

Blocks time is normal in civilian logbooks, but it's not strictly legal to simply add a margin on making assumptions - albeit that I know some people do that. My advice would be to forget about that, you don't need it anyhow as you have more than enough hours for any version of PPL, but even with allowables will need a lot more flying for any version of CPL.

My logbooks cover both civilian and military flying. I always logged in the military way for all of my military time, just have the occasional note in the summary reminding anybody reading the logbook of that. It's fine, honest, and unproblematic.

Going forwards though, start logging blocks time for all your civilian flying.

G

Know nothing of the subject matter, however it is not the airplane it is the regulations that you fly under.
You could fly the exact same registration aircraft under different sets of regulations and have to follow different rules.

Which is why it's not unusual for people who fly under multiple regulatory regimes to operate multiple parallel logbooks.

I've not got in a military aircraft for quite a few years, but certainly run separate and very different totals for CAA and FAA, for example.

G

GtE. As a non-military qualified pilot, why would you log military times in your civilian logbook?

(1) Because I used my UAS Bulldog time towards my first PPL (multiple decades ago, when it was normal and permitted).

(2) Because I was a military qualified Flight Test Observer at Boscombe Down, and a lot of those hours are FTO hours, relevant to my ongoing flight test career, if not my pilots licences. My FTO and Mission Scientist time are all in the same logbooks as my pilot flying, just not in the same columns, and not used for any pilot qualification totals. My preference as it's a personal logbook - but arranged in a way to make carefully sure that no authority could misinterpret it, as I should

My military hours are a very small proportion of my total time now, but they weren't once, and there's some very interesting flying in there that I like to record in one place.

Similarly my CAA and FAA flying are both in one logbook, just with completely different totals because of the very different logging rules for the two authorities. I'm very far from unique in that.

G

Thanks for making that clear. I think the OP was talking about pilot hours so your UAS hours are relevant to the discussion, albeit not so relevant these days, but you keeping interesting other non-pilot flying in the logbook less so.

Yes, this is about pilot hours. Whilst I have non-pilot aircrew qualifications, increasingly few do nowadays. Flight Test Engineers might be one of the last remaining non-pilot aircrew in the civilian world!

G

There is a world of difference between logging 'block time', contemporaneously, and retrospectively adding a random figure to your 'airborne hours' to create 'block time'.

In 1998 there was an agreement in place that recognised the adding of a 'random figure' to RAF logbook times when using them towards a civilian licence. That figure was 10 minutes per sortie for fast jet aircraft and 10 minutes per sortie for training aircraft. I do not know what the figure was for other types.
I no longer have the reference that permitted this back then but I DO have a certificated logbook entry to that effect dated 6 Jan 1998. I do not know when this came into effect and have no idea when and if it stopped.