Division of the Hour

[Barlowtoad]

Hi all first post time.

I have tried the search but cannot find the answers so please don't burn me if this is an old question.

I have just started my PPL with the hope to one day becoming a professional pilot and want to get the hours logged correctly from the beginning.

Should the hours flow be logged as tenths of and hour as in 0.1,0.2 to 0.8,0.9 or should they be logged by the good old fashioned 60 mins in the hour method.

Thanks in Advance.

[RTN11]

Whichever you fancy. I would say the decimal, rounding the flight time to the nearest 6 minutes, makes it a lot easier to add up at the end, but either are perfectly acceptable to the authorities.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Personally I do it to the nearest minute, but nearest 5 is most usual. Some people do it in decimal hours.

All are perfectly acceptable, but if you have no good reason to do it otherwise, nearest 5 minutes will make you the same as about 80% of other pilots.

Just stick to one once you've decided.

[Tinstaafl]

I recommend decimal. It will save a lot of bother when summing pages of your log book over the years to come.

[taybird]

I round to the nearest 5 minutes. It's easy to put in my logbook. I keep an excel sheet as a copy which acts as back-up plus makes it so easy to add up, and to calculate things like "total multi, total tailwheel, latest twelve months aerobatics and total number of cross country trips" and other such combinations as wanted by insurance people and when applying for jobs. The decimal one kinda goes wrong if you don't have a Hobbs, since the tacho lies for circuits etc.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Hobbs lies as well since it is highly unlikely to be wired up to measure chock to chock time.

[Permanent Standby]

As Ghengis says Hobbs usually works off a master switch or wired up to a generator so bias towards engine time rather than chock time. The CAP804 definition is when the aircraft first moved with the intention of flight, until it comes to rest at the end.

Personally I use decimal, but both methods are acceptable under the rules. Decimal is easier for someone from the calculator generation (I.e. Me).

As for rounding up/down, that is a grey area. (Probably on purpose)

Hope that helps.

[Tinstaafl]

I don't use Hobbs or tacho to determine flight time. I note the time to the nearest 5 min from off blocks to on blocks and convert that to decimal.