Electronic logbook
 

Hi all, just a quick question. Do any of you have any recommendations for a cloud-based logbook app that can be used on a phone, tablet or laptop? I've looked at LogTen pro but it's pretty expensive, but admittedly very impressive. Are there any more cost effective solutions people use? Cheers

Fair points but I've done that previously and now I want a more slick solution preferably with a phone app. Don't mind paying but LogTen is £70 which is a bit excessive.

Try Logbook Adder. Search for it on the Apple App Store. It was made by a mate of mine. Very cheap and does the job nicely.

BV

Thanks Bob, have an hours calculator already. Looking for a comprehensive app where you just put your flight details in and it produces the summaries as demanded. Basically I want LogTen pro capability but at less buy-in price!

I'd need to be doing an awful lot of flying before I'd consider spending more than a couple of quid on an app to do my monthly summary for me. Ultimately you're still going to have to write them in pen and ink aren't you?

You must be getting paid too much. If you have spare cash I have more great ideas for how to ease your pain.

BV

Try mccPilotLog. One time pay only and lots of functions. Works on all platforms.

MCCPilotLog? Free to try, but you need to pay to be able to use it on your phone as well. I've only been using it for a brief period but it seems to do all I want.

How legal is an electronic logbook? Surely you need a paper signed up copy to prove your hours? Otherwise it is an extra chore over and above.

I may look like a spoil-sport and I'm not a (mlitary) pilot but merely a programmer. But the question you should ask yourself is how important are those data to you? If you can say without hesitation that it won't make a lot of a difference to your life if they suddenly disappear don't bother reading any further.

If they are important to you, though, your first concern shouldn't be the shiny interface but the question if you can keep them in a way that doesn't depend on the continued existence of the company storing them for you. Companies have gone out of business all the time. And if the company you trust your data with uses another company for storing them and that company folds, they may very easily also be toast. So, is there a plan B for that? Can you retain all those data in a place you can control and in a format you can read once they've vanished without prior notice? Or, for short: if you can't make a local backup of your data that you can use once they've vanished from the internet better stay away from them, no matter how nice and professional their user interface looks like. When the proverbial sh*t hits the fan there will be no user interface left and the only question then will be if you've retained a backup of your data that you still can use.

jtt. Spot on. There is a backup that will retain a permanent record. As far as I know it's called "Pilot's Flying Log Book".Pen and paper. Simples

Thinking out loud, isn't there an option on JPA for aircrew hours? Never heard anyone use it and I've never even clicked the link so I wonder if I'm missing a trick.

Don't trust anything valuable to the cloud. Plenty of people have found this the hard way.

I've used both Excel and a paper book for years - largely because where I fly, a paper log book is mandatory. The spread-sheet is great for calculation's and summaries.

I use a good App on iPad / iPhone - I won't name it as it's still in Beta and not available.

My point is, however, that despite it being backed up both in the cloud and on my own computer, each time I fill a "page" I print it off in high quality, put it in a nice folder and sign the declaration at the bottom of the page to say it's legit. Voila - a paper logbook to satisfy anyone that wants it plus a hard copy backup! (It's my intention in time to have the pages bound properly).

I love the ease of use of the App but I keep a paper copy too.

LogTen Pro might be expensive but it's the canine's gonads.

I use Logbook.aero. Excellent piece of kit, as versatile as you could want it to be. Every time you make an entry you are e mailed a back up. I think it's about £30 a year subscription, or about a round of drinks in the average pub if you want to put it into perspective.

Thanks for your views. My concern is mainly that I am conscious that the only legally admissible record of my flying is in an highly fragile paper book that has been around the world a few times. If you don't have any more useful suggestions to make then that's fine. Leave it to someone else. Equally, casting aspersions as to my (likely far less than yours) salary are unhelpful, especially since I started this by trying to improve capability and reduce expense. Honestly I despair some times.

Thanks to everyone who made constructive suggestions, and I'd be interested to know the beta one mentioned above that wasn't named.

To all the dinosaurs who's best response is to say "what's wrong with engraving it in stone?", I'm afraid I don't need any more of your wittycisms. If you're not interested in progress and making things more secure, faster to update and less fallable to human error, then why don't you click on one of the other threads instead of getting gritty with me..?

And yes, the cheap recycled paper book that gets written in once a month, is the one and only legal document in the RAF, but that's not my question either.

Ignore the Cold Warriors! They're the exact same ones who are holding back 2Gp massively on EFBs, which save millions and make everyone's lives easier.

Anyway, MCCPilotLog gets my vote. You can even get a paper logbook printed (and bound) straight from the app!

Can I respectfully make a suggestion? If you're thinking of leaving Her Majesty's Service and fly civilian at any time, be sure to add your military flights to a civilian 'logbook' too with the off and on block times. LASORs 2010 allowed factoring of military logbooks, but under EASA it doesn't technically exist any more...

Best of luck 👍🏻

Does anyone know of a good place where I can get my e-logbook nicely bound?

S-D

As someone who no doubt will be denigrated as a 'cold war dinosaur', I would point out that this is EXACTLY what I recommended around 20 years ago....

'Factoring' of military logbooks was only ever permitted under the conditions stated in Appendix B to Section A of LASORS2010. Since the advent of Part-FCL, no such allowance is permitted and hence it is even more important that military pilots wishing to take up civilian flying in later life keep a civil log book with flight times entered in accordance with civil requirements as well as their military Pilots Flying Logbook.

FFS it takes about a minute to enter the details after each flight - with the amount of flying people manage these days, why is it such a problem? The only problem I recall was when someone walked off with all the logbooks for the Sqn Cdr or Stn Cdrs' signatures and didn't bring them back for a week...:ugh:

If you don't have a paper copy what will you show your grandchildren? I have found my father's wartime logbook fascinating and have visited some of the aircraft he flew.

On the other hand, I've visited some of the aircraft I flew with my children and grandchildren. I was quite shocked when I first found an airframe I had flown sitting in a museum, but now I accept it as normal.

One of many advantages of electronic logbooks is the enormous wealth of information they can store compared to paper logbooks. I typed all my paper logbooks into an electronic logbook. I then googled every individual aircraft I have ever flown (120) and traced photos and their histories. Quite an interesting exercise - I found four had been crashed, two with fatalities.

It took a few years to complete the whole exercise, just doing a bit here and there when I had time.

The electronic logbooks then work out all sorts of interesting facts like automatic night hours, draw nice maps with all your routes, produce just about any statistic you want. Way better than paper logbooks and way more useful.

I even have an app which fills in my logbook automatically - it uses the iPhone or ipAD sensors to detect when the aircraft moves off blocks, when it gets airborne, when it lands and when it is on blocks, and even automatically records the ICAO code of the start and end airports, and works out how much of the leg was night.

The only drawbacks is that some retarded aviation authorities that i have to deal with in in Africa take a dim view of them

I moved to an electronic logbook circa 1990, very shortly after leaving the RAF. The first one was Microlog; written by a BA pilot; based on Clipper (that dates it!); and later I moved to RosterLog. The latter worked out my FTLs, allowances and overtime payments as well. At the end of each month I printed out the flying for that month and put it in a clear pocket display book. Job done.

I am amazed that the RAF is still using quill pens;)

YS

Thanks again, looks like more votes for MCCPilotLog. I'll check it out. Anyone care to detail the procedures on mil-civil flight times these days? I was under the impression from people i've shared ground school classrooms with that the factoring thing is still happening although I've lost the source of that. Beagle I understand the point about keeping 2 logbooks, but are you also therefore suggesting I start transposing all my military flying since the start into a separate logbook to cover the chock-to-chock time? All help, particularly with references, gratefully accepted.

I just checked and you can print in either RAF-414 format or various civil formats from MCCPilotlog. I'm not familiar with the differences in those formats but I guess that if you can get everything into the database in the right format, you can then get it out again in both options.

I had all my flying logged in an Excel sheet and used this to import into MCCPilotlog. It takes a bit of fiddling but you can modify the data in Excel first before importing. Perhaps you can use that trick in your situation as well.

LASORS 2010 allowed factoring of military logbooks to allow taxi time (10mins per training flight, 15 mins for duty flight). There's a link to the document here: http://www.999tom.com/documents/pilotdocs/lasors.pdf

Once EASA came into effect LASORS was superseded by CAP804, which has no mention of factoring for taxi time. Beagle will be able to provide more info on this.

People are still factoring and producing a signed addendum to their logbook on leaving the Service, but I would highly recommend running a civilian logbook alongside your military one, logging the same details,but offblocks to onblocks times, so that you don't get caught out by a future employer not recognising the LASORS factorisation.

St Austell
 

Have a look at Coastline Software Mr Andy Thorpe, he's on Linked in and made a really easy and not overly expensive log book programme a few years back.

I will second mccPilotLog.
It is worth the money.

I used to run my elogbook on an old (free) software and started to have compatibility problems with it.

With mccPilotLog, you may pay extra to have it saved on "the cloud" if you want.
But you can back it up all by yourself and as much as you need (I email it to me every once in a while)

MCC Pilotlog/Crewlounge Pilotlog is a RipOff
 

If you are considering MCC Pilot Log, here’s my experience:

I purchased MCC Pilot Log Enterprise Edition (Lifetime) 5 months ago because I had heard good reviews and the company’s web site pitched how there were no subscription fees. It cost me about $81.09 after the EUR conversion. The MCC Pilot Log web site states “We do not run a subscription plan. We have 3 editions with one-time fee for life-time use. The basic STD Edition is even FREE.”

During these 5 months I used the software, but suddenly the airline interface stopped working. I went to the support page to log a support ticket and was greeted with the following message:

“IMPORTANT NOTE : 10 years after the first release, and 2600 changes and fixes later, it was time to rebuild mccPILOTLOG on new fundaments.

mccPILOTLOG is still available to existing customers. New customers can still purchase mccPILOTLOG, if they want. However, we are no longer updating mccPILOTLOG. Instead, the team is focusing on the new logbook. We recommend all pilots to migrate to our new app CrewLounge PILOTLOG !”



After my initial disbelief and further investigation I found the FAQ page for people like me who had just purchased what was sold as a lifetime license. Below is an excerpt from the company’s FAQ page:



” I paid for mccPILOTLOG, do I have to pay again ?

We keep our word : your license for mccPILOTLOG remains valid ! You have paid for a lifetime use of mccPILOTLOG, so you can continue to using mccPILOTLOG as long as you want. We do not terminate mccPILOTLOG, your logbook continues to run. We do not terminate support, you continue to receiving the same support as before.

We only terminate further updating and bug fixing. Our team is now focusing on the CrewLounge AERO Suite, a completely new platform created with the latest coding technologies and security protocols. CrewLounge PILOTLOG, as part of the CrewLounge AERO Suite, is the new pilot logbook to replace mccPILOTLOG. CrewLounge PILOTLOG is subscription based, we do no longer offer one-time payments.

We invite all pilots with a lifetime license for mccPILOTLOG to migrate and enjoy the new CrewLounge AERO Suite ! We certainly understand that you are reluctant to switching to a subscription plan. We have GOOD news for you : You don’t !

Contrary to our competitors, that either ceased to exist, or that canceled all license keys and forced users into a subscription plan, we offer grandfathering rights to all users of mccPILOTLOG ! You can now migrate your lifetime license from mccPILOTLOG to CrewLounge PILOTLOG with a one-time contribution ! Buy 3 years and get Lifetime ! No subscription, no extra charges ! We will also pay the VAT for you !

That’s true ! All pilots with a lifetime license for mccPILOTLOG can now transfer their license to the new CrewLounge PILOTLOG application and be excluded from subscriptions, for lifetime! This offer is limited in time !

As a bonus, you receive a free 1-year license for the popular calendar app CrewLounge CONNECT (value 12.00 EUR) ! And, as an extra bonus, all PRO users (mccPILOTLOG) can now free upgrade to ENT (CrewLounge PILOTLOG) without being charged extra !

So, here is our offer :

• purchase 3 years of the new CrewLounge PILOTLOG software (*)
• get 10% immediate discount (for 3-year orders)
• get another 20% discount (that is, we will pay the VAT applicable to your country)
• transfer your Lifetime license to CrewLounge PILOTLOG (be excluded from subscriptions)
• upgrade to a higher Edition ENT or the new ENT+ (even if you are on PRO today)
• get 1 year free use of our popular roster app CrewLounge CONNECT

This is a temporary offer, we hold the right to terminate this offer at any time !

(*) Pilots that purchased mccPILOTLOG in 2019, can upgrade with paying only 1-year subscription to CrewLounge AERO.”

Essentially, the lifetime software I just purchased will not be updated any more. Therefore, the airline interface will not be fixed. In other words, my software is now useless to me.

But wait, I checked out their upgrade offer and found that I will need to pay for 3 years up front to get the lifetime subscription that I already paid for 5 months ago. The price is 2.99 EUR/month or about $3.35/month as of today. A total of about $120.00. Believe it or not, I actually considered just paying the money and moving on with my life. So I downloaded the trial version of the new CrewLounge Pilot Log, imported my data and tried to download my schedule with the airline interface. Of course – it doesn’t work.

Overall, my experience with this company is extremely negative. I would not recommend MCC Pilot Log or CrewLounge Pilot Log. You will be disappointed and will end up having to pay for a real logbook program from a reputable company. Good luck folks. Learning is a change in behavior as a result of experience.