EAA Sport Aviation - March 2012

examples of each. The edges are all worn from carrying it around with me on my flights. The first entry? “April 17, 1976, Cessna 150, 63547, MSN, local, fundamentals, taxiing, pre-flight checks.” A quick check of the FAA registry shows that N63547 is now located in Kenai, Alaska. Having flown to Alaska and back this summer, I know that must have been quite a haul in a Cessna 150.

My first logbook has all my early training carefully noted right up to my CFI checkride, 329.1 flight hours, and then nothing more. Apparently, I must have decided that with a brand new CFI certificate I was now a big-time professional pilot, and I needed a big-time professional pilot logbook. So I immediately bought one of those black master logbooks. In fact, it is The Standard Pilot Master Log, model SP- 6. The word “Master” must have appealed to me. Certainly, it is far superior to The Standard Pilot Logbook, model SP- 4, that it succeeded.

MY ‘MASTER LOG’

I must be a “Standard” logbook man because all my logbooks are of their manufacture. Each logbook comes complete with a jet airplane logo on the cover with what looks like satellites orbiting around it. I believe the Pilot Master Log, model SP- 6, comes only in black. I’ve never seen one in burgundy. I’m guessing the black color is supposed to reflect the gravity of my new professional pilot position in life. It’s big and clumsy, and I obviously haven’t carried it around much because it is pristine in comparison to my first one.

I’m sure that, at the time, I thought I would never fill the pages of such an immense logbook, but it turns out that I filled it in only six years. Within its pages are carefully recorded my history as a flight instructor and cargo pilot. Names I have long forgotten are cryptically recorded with a letter and a dash before them to denote the type of training they received. I must have thought that the letter before their name would be important, but it doesn’t seem so three decades in the future.

I have a very fancy record of all my CFI sign-offs and recommendations in the back of the logbook. I am surprised to find that I ushered 29 new pilots into the world, as well as recommending a wealth of instrument ratings, commercial certificates, multiengine ratings, CFIs, and instrument instructors.

I seem to have cornered the market on multiengine instructor recommendations in my area. Most of those multiengine instructor recommendations were accomplished in a Cessna 310. A Cessna 310 wouldn’t be my first choice in a multiengine trainer, too fast and difficult to fly. But I also conducted some of that training in something called a

People have asked me how
I recorded the “Miracle on
the Hudson” in my logbook.

Between you and me, I put
it down as “Jan 2009,
Airbus, 37. 1 hours.”
No earth-shattering
comments here.

PA-34-200. I’m a Cessna guy, not a Piper guy. All those Piper designations are still a mystery to me. A quick Internet search reveals that a PA-34-200 is a Piper Seneca. Hmm… two minutes ago I would have sworn to you that I have never flown a Piper Seneca. Turns out, I have 28 hours in one.

Around that same time, I flew several flights to International Falls, Minnesota, in a Cessna 421. No memory of those either, not of the Cessna 421 and not of International Falls.

By the time I had started my second logbook, I had moved to recording multiple flight legs on one line, a clear departure from my first where I recorded every leg separately, as if it were an event worth celebrating. By logbook’s end, I had 4,199.5

hours recorded in its pages. Not much really
for a logbook that, when I bought it, seemed
so vast it would last a lifetime.

This is turning into a forensic investigation of history…my history. No archaeologist could show more interest than me, as I pore over these pages and Google search the N numbers chronicled therein. Where are all those aircraft now? Some are far afield like that first Cessna 150 in Alaska. Some are still close to home, like the Cessna 150 I soloed, N7796U. It’s only one state away in Michigan. Most of the Convair 440s I logged time in flying cargo are aluminum cans now. And, I find that a surprising number of the Aero Commander 680s I flew came to a bad end. When I search their N numbers I get NTSB reports, not registration data. Young guys like me who just took their eyes off the ball for a moment and paid the ultimate price.

BOOK THREE

I must have decided that my third logbook would be my final one. I was at the airlines by that point, and for two years I recorded my time by the day and then inexplicably moved to recording it by the month. It was more a running total just for interest’s sake than a record of my flying career. This might seem like an abandonment of aeronautical convention, but it puts me head and shoulders above the vast majority of airline pilots who don’t keep a logbook at all. Flying time only has a purpose when you’re trying to meet the requirements of a new rating or attempting to get a job. After a point it has no value.

Before I get a lot of mail about FAA logbook recording requirements, let me say that pilots who are part of an airline training program are exempted from all those niggling little currency regulations. As a practicing airline pilot flying 800 to 900 hours in a year, I would regularly go out of night landing currency over the summer and instrument currency at any time of the year, as defined by FAR 91. We fly under Part 121, however. Part 121 says that hotshot airline pilots like me don’t have to follow those rules, and the airline has your training record that proves your competency.