Post-Checkride Logbook entries

N918KT

N918KT

Line Up and Wait
Joined
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Philadelphia, PA
Display Name
KT
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KOQN
Just wondering, once you pass your checkride, do you guys log every single flight if you weren't planning on getting another rating or certificate?

Right now for me I am deciding to log every single flight just in case I want to pursue my flying a little bit further in the future.

Also what do you write down in the remarks section, especially if you weren't practicing any maneuvers or procedures, like $100 hamburger flights? Actually all three of my post-checkride flights so far were to fly somewhere to eat and come back. I actually flew from KOQN to 26N (Ocean City, NJ) and back for breakfast.
 
N918KT said:
Just wondering, once you pass your checkride, do you guys log every single flight if you weren't planning on getting another rating or certificate?
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Yes. It's needed for showing recency, but I mainly do it out of habit.

EDIT: Insurance is also a factor.
N918KT said:
Also what do you write down in the remarks section, especially if you weren't practicing any maneuvers or procedures, like $100 hamburger flights?
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Usually nothing, unless there's something particularly interesting.

EDIT #2: I do write down IFR approaches.
 
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N918KT said:
Just wondering, once you pass your checkride, do you guys log every single flight if you weren't planning on getting another rating or certificate?

Right now for me I am deciding to log every single flight just in case I want to pursue my flying a little bit further in the future.

Also what do you write down in the remarks section, especially if you weren't practicing any maneuvers or procedures, like $100 hamburger flights? Actually all three of my post-checkride flights so far were to fly somewhere to eat and come back. I actually flew from KOQN to 26N (Ocean City, NJ) and back for breakfast.
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I log every flight. I have no interest in any more ratings - I am 80 and mostly flying as a CFI or some solo stuff to keep current. But yes, I have logged every flight since leaving the Air Force in 1973. Six logbooks, nearly 7,900 hours. Remarks usually name the students or pilots I fly with for training and flight reviews, but there are some comments I treasure such as aerial photography or search flights for downed aircraft.
 
Do you guys also log any Cross Country time for flights greater than 50 nm, 25 nm for sport pilots, or do you leave the Cross Country time blank after the checkride?
 
N918KT said:
Just wondering, once you pass your checkride, do you guys log every single flight if you weren't planning on getting another rating or certificate?
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We're only required to log flights that establish currency, and/or to meet the requirements for a certificate or rating. Everything else is optional.

I have many thousands of hours of airline flying that I did not personally log--the airline created and retained those records--but I did log all of my GA flying during that time.

In the remarks block I try to note anything of significance or interest, or just some small detail that will jog my memory later on. Doing so creates a kind of personal journal, one which I've found useful, rewarding, and often amusing when looking back.
 
N918KT said:
Do you guys also log any Cross Country time for flights greater than 50 nm, 25 nm for sport pilots, or do you leave the Cross Country time blank after the checkride?
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You should log the landing at an airport greater then 50nm from Original departure point. If you decide to pursue an instrument rating you will need 50hours of PIC Cross Country time. Surprising how many instrument checkrides get hung up by this not being logged properly

If you decide to go commercial, showing your flights will help document what kind of experience you have for any potential commercial employers.

Brian
CFIIIG/ASEL
 
N918KT said:
Do you guys also log any Cross Country time for flights greater than 50 nm, 25 nm for sport pilots, or do you leave the Cross Country time blank after the checkride?
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I log any flight to another airport as Cross Country (in case I want a Part 135 job), and have another column for Cross Country >50NM (if I ever want an ATP certificate).
 
One good reason to log flights is that if you ever want an instrument rating or, just to improve your skills, a commercial rating, then having a well document logbook is important. I’d suggest reading the requirements for both ratings and rather than just going for a $100 hamburger, knock out some of the requirements.e.g if you are flying somewhere for fun, instead of flying 48 miles for lunch, go somewhere that is 50 miles so it counts as cross country. If flying for night currency, do 10 with a tower so it counts for your commercial. If you are flying somewhere by yourself that is 250 miles away, add another 50 miles and a stop to meet the commercial requirement.
When it is time for your BFR, pick something on the requirements list and do that instead of flying around the pattern.
 
I log all flights as a matter of habit but also to provide data to help with insurance rates. I also keep track of any ground based training for the same. Insurance companies like to see pilots engaged in proficiency training.
 
agree w/ above on logging. For comments, if I eat there I might mention how the food was, in 3 words or less, for future planning.
 
N918KT said:
Just wondering, once you pass your checkride, do you guys log every single flight if you weren't planning on getting another rating or certificate?

Right now for me I am deciding to log every single flight just in case I want to pursue my flying a little bit further in the future.

Also what do you write down in the remarks section, especially if you weren't practicing any maneuvers or procedures, like $100 hamburger flights? Actually all three of my post-checkride flights so far were to fly somewhere to eat and come back. I actually flew from KOQN to 26N (Ocean City, NJ) and back for breakfast.
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I know an airline pilot that never kept a single log book. On the other hand might want to keep a logbook for getting better quotes on insurance. I know Gallagher always asks me how many hours/instruction/etc. I would imagine that as I build hours and add ratings my rates should reflect the changes.

Then again there was a chief pilot at one of the major airlines that was popped by the FAA because he never got a pilots license. Your luck may vary.
 
Regulation-wise, you only need to log enough to show qualification and currency. But there are other benefits to logging. Insurance. In some cases rental qualification. As already mentioned, forming good habits, so you don’t one day look back and discover you are not current just because you forgot.

There is a downside to logging every flight, though. The loss of those 1-3 minutes you took to log it.
 
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If you are the average newly minted private pilot, you will not be actively flying in 3 years. For most it really doesn’t matter.
 
I have over 28,000 hours and I still log every flight.
Under remarks I put the name of the person that I flew with and if I gave instruction as a CFI what instructed. As for Cross Country I log any flight to another airport as Cross Country. When I got my ratings back in 5he late 70’s/early 80’s for the airplane Private and Commercial you needed a minimum of 50 miles. For the Helicopter add on you needed 25 miles. While for the ATP there was no minimum, just like there is no minimum for the Part 135 requirement now.
 
I log every flight in triplicate - paper logbooks (on the 3rd one), an excel spreadsheet turned into a google sheet that I made back in the 1990s with all kinds of formulas, graphs and calculations and Foreflight. I don't tend to update every one after every flight though - I usually only update Foreflight right away and batch up the other 2 every month or so.

Side benefit beyond the redundancy, I am incentivized to keep the notes meaningful but succinct since I have to write/type it out 3 times. I write it in a way that I think would be meaningful when I'm old and want to revisit memory lane - so it's things like "Family trip to Bahamas, strong headwinds and icing on descent" or "Took Brady and Joey for their first GA flight- sightseeing tour of San Francisco Bay and Napa"
 
I'm a low-time pilot but logged every one. I didn't know or do some of the things suggested here, but I think that they are excellent points.... breaking out a columns for cross country and cross country> 50 miles, for example
That said though, it's hard to catch everything...but with today's electronic logs it's probably a lot easier
One example is the change in rules and definitions. High performance/complex for example.

The only things I can think to add come from a project I did a few years ago...well, from that, as well as some reminiscing sessions through the years

a few years back, I took on a project to digitize my logbook, and entered it into a spreadsheet. I didn't type out all the comments and such, but I captured all the flights.
Then that spreadsheet evolved. Some random question would come to mind...often from POA discussions—usually just random trivial things. So I'd add a column and let the spreadsheet do some calculations for me. Kinda fun sometimes. (yeah, I'm different that way). How many hours logged by year for example

so one time I did a project trying to clarify how many different aircraft I have flown... so I went in a research rabbit hole trying to find each aircraft and I started a list of aircraft to include things like variant (Cessna 172N, 172F, 172M, etc....) instead of just C-172 as they had been recorded), Whenever I could I'd list the year model, serial number, & horsepower (because sometimes it can be changed).

In a couple of cases my log entries were made by CFI's doing the checkout or flight reviews. Hard or impossible to read handwriting and in a couple of cases, it seems that they wrote down the wrong tail numbers...those would be rentals that I only flew once so I don't know much about them. So with that I had to do a lot of research and some assuming.

Anyway, some random thoughts that I wish that I'd done
- not really a logbook thing, but I wish that I'd have kept my file with my rental rate pricelists for going back to see what I paid to rent the Cessna 177RG for example, or how much did my instrument rating cost all-in back in the day?​
​
- I wish that I'd done a better job of recording aircraft data (verifying tail registration numbers, serial number, horsepower, etc.) today it would be so easy to snap a picture of the dataplate of a new-to-you aircraft so that you could record the info later when you get home​
​
- I wish that I'd have inserted a line after some of the flights when a CFI logged it, just to add comments. Not every flight would need it, but you will forget things that you think that you'll remember forever. A logbook can be part journal too.​

sometime later, I learned about myflightbook.com. My spreadsheet made entering that easy...and there's some cool tools in there. Some of which I'd done in my spreadsheet (airport counts for example) but that site takes it to another level! I still had to do quite a bit of research because many of my airports had been recorded with an old obsolete identifier and some of those airports are no longer in existance. Another interesting thing is the crowd-sourced aircraft info. In some cases it was helpful to complete the picture but in some cases it wasn't accurate to my experience....listed as a TAA equipped, even when such a thing didn't exist when I flew it...or some aircraft had been repowered, etc... (there are workarounds for that stuff in the myflightbook site)
 
As others have said, having the log can be important for currency and insurance.
N918KT said:
Do you guys also log any Cross Country time for flights greater than 50 nm, 25 nm for sport pilots, or do you leave the Cross Country time blank after the checkride?
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Those distances only apply for certificate requirements. After you have the certificate, any flight to a different airport counts as cross country. Me, I log as XC any purposeful flight to another airport more than 10-15 miles away, but not flights where I happen to drop in to frequently visited field in the local area.
RudyP said:
I write it in a way that I think would be meaningful when I'm old and want to revisit memory lane - so it's things like "Family trip to Bahamas, strong headwinds and icing on descent" or "Took Brady and Joey for their first GA flight- sightseeing tour of San Francisco Bay and Napa"
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:yeahthat:

I tend to forget to write in the logbook until a month later, but I record a GPS track with my phone on every flight, so once in awhile I sit down and review those tracks and write them in.
 
I log every flight, xc over 50 miles, comments about small airports that offer to make banana bread next time I stop in. I also keep a debrief notebook for things I wish I had done better, unusual events/conditions, things like that.
 
I put passengers’ names under Remarks because sometimes I browse back through logbooks and recall the flight and friendship. Also things like if it was a fly-in, or training/practicing emergency procedures.
 
I have logged every flight from my first training flight to the most current. It's a great memory trigger. I also include short notes.
"Oh, yeah! I remember that."
 
I fly every weekday for work, weekends for pleasure, and occasionally as a CFI. Still log all my flights. I actually enjoy logging my flights. I do occasionally look back at enjoyable flights I’ve done with family and friends in the past to look at the notes I put in the comments and to the attached photos now that my logbook is electronic.
 
I log every flight. I any relevant notes. I find that my logbooks are like a diary. I occasionally look up something important from my past. For example, when my father passed away and I flew home for the funeral. Lee
 
Clip4 said:
If you are the average newly minted private pilot, you will not be actively flying in 3 years. For most it really doesn’t matter.
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That is a sad statistic. Why finish it if you don't love it?
 
When you are a student pilot, it is an organized activity with specific steps to take to get your certificate. After the checkride, most new private pilots give a few rides, maybe do a few trips for meals, but there is no more syllabus or lessons to schedule, and many just stop flying after a while. Our local FBO has an operations manager who has her certificate but probably hasn't flown for two or three years. She partnered with two other pilots to lease a 172 and then didn't use it. Paid her share of hangar rent, annuals, insurance... for nothing.
 
It's tough to maintain enthusiasm if you don't have a reason to fly (or even a reason to just hang around at the airport). When I was renting, it was only an occasional thing, unless I was renting the plane to go somewhere. But when I bought the T-Craft, I was immediately part of the little old putt-putt plane community at the airport, and we did lots of things in groups of several planes. Renters don't get that community support. Maybe some flying clubs do, but most of the clubs I've seen seem not that different from renting.

My dive gear is stashed in the attic. Spearfishing was once a priority in my life, but I have many interests and others (like flying!) are more important now.
 
RudyP said:
I’ll never understand the type of people who do that…

…I keep my unused scuba gear in the basement like a normal person.
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Not me. I sold my copies of Racine's 'Andromaque' (1667) and 'Britannicus' (1669) as soon as I was done with ENGL 230.
 
Clip4 said:
If you are the average newly minted private pilot, you will not be actively flying in 3 years. For most it really doesn’t matter.
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I’m not disagreeing, realize many newly rated private pilots stop flying shortly after earning the cert- but do you have a source for the 3 years?
 
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SFDukie said:
I’m not disagreeing, realize many newly rated private pilots stop flying shortly after earning the cert- but do you have a source for the 3 years?
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Actually I was being kind, most never see a flight review. Do I have a statistic? No, but about any flight school or longtime flight instructor will tell you the same.

Another sad fact is the average flight hours a members of a non-profit flying club is 2 hours a month. These are people who have access to aircraft to use without strict flight school policies. These reason that value is so low is the percentage of members who rarely or never fly and pay the monthly fees. It is also why non profit flying clubs are a really good deal if you fly a lot.
 
Clip4 said:
Another sad fact is the average flight hours a members of a non-profit flying club is 2 hours a month.
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And I think the average small plane owner flies only about 4 hours a month.
 
OSH and SnF trips are a great way to get the average higher.

But I do log every flight, even if it's a month after (sometimes). It's nice to look through the logbook a couple years later and see an entry stating "gave Joe Doe a ride", and realize Joe is now an ATP at his first airline.
 
I used to do the ham radio thing all the time, not so much anymore. I used to shoot about 2x a week in the wintertime, haven't been in a few years. Hobbies change, and that damn thing called work keeps getting in the way, too.

For me, I almost need goals to keep me in something compared to work and everything else. That's honestly part of why I'm working on my instrument. Plus with flying, the curve to get back into it can be a bit higher than other things, and with instrument there's a built in incentive to stay current.
 
RudyP said:
I’ll never understand the type of people who do that…

…I keep my unused scuba gear in the basement like a normal person.
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If you’re looking for a home …. I’m a freelance instructor and always looking for loaner gear for students. Especially for when I teach scouts
 
Flying wise - log everything. If nothing else for currency and it’s easy to forget to log if it’s not part of your normal. But you might want to rent or buy something bigger/faster and logged hours are a key element for insurance. Plus you update hours for each medical
 
Clip4 said:
Another sad fact is the average flight hours a members of a non-profit flying club is 2 hours a month.
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Wow! I am finally +3SD in something!
 
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