AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2014 - 91

P&E

DOGFIGHT: LOGBOOK LOGJAM

Around the office we often joke that Senior Editor Ian Twombly is the youngest old man here. In this discussion, he may prove that point again. He favors the paper logbook; Senior Editor Dave Hirschman goes virtual.

Tell a better story

Pen, paper, perfection

Digital logbooks give a fuller picture

The classic method is still the best

B Y D AV E H I R S C H M A N

B Y I A N J. T W O M B LY

WAX POETIC about the soulful and sensual texture of your precious
leather-bound pilot logbook if you must, but be honest about its
limitations. It's easy to lose, hard to read, conveys scant information, and likely is incomplete or incorrect because of your own
errors and omissions. Digital logbooks solve all these problems-
and they can become active catalysts that provide future-looking
notifications far beyond the passive role of legacy logbooks.
* First, a digital logbook is stored in the cloud so you can't lose it,
and you can access it from anywhere.
* It's legible, and you have as much space for entries as you
want, so you don't have to engage in the squinting CFI practice
of micro-writing.
* It's easy to attach photos, videos, maps, and other digital mementos of any flight.
* It does the math for you, so addition errors and Wite-Out are things of
the past.
* It keeps a running tally of the things
insurance companies and 8710 forms
want to know, like time in type, night
takeoffs and landings, retract time,
et cetera-and reminds you via email
notification when you're close to slipDAVE HIRSCHMAN
ping out of currency.
A digital logbook reduces data
entry time and mistakes. Tell it the registration number of the
airplane you're flying and it will know whether to log the time
as complex, high performance, tailwheel, retractable, multi, seaplane, and the rest.
My favorite digital logbook is MyFlightBook.com, and it's free,
smart, and thoughtfully created by a fellow pilot. If you want to
share your flying experiences via social media, you can do so at the
touch of a button. There are even quizzes on various airports and
a pat on the back for new ratings and achievements.
I like the ease and accuracy
MyFlightBook provides. And filling
it out doesn't seem like a chore.
I've always treasured my paper
logbooks. But I've been a less than
faithful correspondent over the
years. There are unexplained gaps in
entries, usually when I got to the end
of one logbook and hadn't purchased
the next one. There are some blocks
where I've filled in a large number of
estimated hours from reconstructed

OF ALL A PILOT'S POSSESSIONS, the logbook is rightfully the most
cherished. It's a journal mixed with statements of fact that transcend the numbers and notes of each entry. That is to say, it has
absolutely no business being replaced with a series of 1s and 0s in
someone's basement computer.
To be fair, I hate usernames, web addresses, passwords, and all
the other frustrations that are par for the digital course. Getting
into my bank account is harder for me than it is for a hacker. So
there is no chance I would give up a paper logbook in favor of one
that lives solely "in the cloud." More than that, digital logbooks
are an affront to the whole logbook culture.
Flying is still a romantic pursuit. We still think about it the way
Leonardo da Vinci did, and write about it the way John Gillespie
Magee Jr. did. In that world, the
logbook is our box of mementos,
something we will hold on to long
after the immediate infatuation of
the flight has faded.
I remember discovering my
grandfather's logbooks, all lined up
neatly in a row on a bookshelf in the
basement. Each one was small and
the pages delicate. I can only hope
that if they so choose, someday my
IAN TWOMBLY
own kids and their kids will have
the first-person account of my flying life to pore over and imagine what flying was like way back in 2014. The slip of paper with
the password for that electronic logbook will be 50 feet deep in
a landfill by then.
But even before my kids have the chance to keep it on their
own bookshelves, I enjoy the nostalgia myself. Occasionally I'll
have a need to go back and total up a certain subset of experience
or reference some date. And every time I get to experience the
flights again. Some people keep meticulous logbooks, but I love
the character that comes from having one with different colors of ink
and a few dates out of order.
I can only imagine what that
experience would be like on a computer. Scroll, skim, scroll, skim, get
distracted by email, scroll. That's
not embracing a memory, it's
research.
Advocates of electronic logbooks
say they are great for crunching
numbers, and I suppose that's true.

Continued on page 93

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2014

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