Logbook maintenance

Your pilot's logbook is not only a personal record of your flying, but an admissible legal document which could be reviewed at any time by an examiner or CAA official. For this reason it is critical that you keep a neat and accurate record of flight entries.

TIPS:

• Enter the flight details as soon as possible after landing. Unless an emergency crops up, details should always be logged on the same day the flight took place to prevent inaccuracy. Avoid sloppy bulk entries.
• Don't be tempted to use shorthand or ditto marks. Airfield identification codes are fine, but missing the year off the date is needless and can make an examiner's job more difficult. Remember other people will need to understand your entries.
• Another reason to always enter the full date including year is in the event flight entries were omitted by mistake, or a page of entries has to be struck out for some reason, then you will need to add flights out of chronological order, so the full dates are imperative for clarity.
• Be accurate with aircraft registration. It is very easy to get the odd letter the wrong way round, or make a 'V' look like a 'U'. In the event your logbook needs to be reviewed, the precise aircraft flown needs to be accurate.
• Comments or remarks for personal flights are not required, but can be useful to remember positive or negative experiences. Try to be concise, as legibility is crucial.
• Like any task, choose an appropriate tool. Using a felt tip or marker pen (or even a pen with very wet ink) is likely to make a mess of your logbook!
• Be sure that any GST passes, training certifications, familiarisation or differences training, or refresher training flights are signed off appropriately in your logbook before you leave the airfield. Mistakes happen and it's best to catch them at the earliest stage to minimise hassle for yourself.
• Endeavour to keep your logbook in a familiar place (maybe a drawer) at all times when not filling it, in order to minimise the chance of losing it.
• It is always sensible to take photographs or scans of logbook pages as they are completed. In the event that you misplace your logbook, the damage will be minimal providing you can accurately reproduce the flight entries.

An example of a neat and legible logbook