Free, Digital, Excel Logbook – download
When you start training, you will need to log your flights and tasks via a log book. For each rating, there will be criteria for things like: Number of flights, tasks acheived, hours flown, # of different gliders flow, mountain hours etc. For new pilots, it is mainly just flights and tasks, but all are cumulative. The non-digital – log book, pictured, is a hard copy and the one USHPA sells and creates. There are also digital, spreadsheet forms that are acceptable as well. FWIW – I believe that the process of handwriting the data is a better process for remembering and I also provide free log books to all students in full programs. If you have not gotten a log book, just ask you Airtime instructor and we will get you one.
Most fields are self explanatory: Date, Location, etc., but some acronyms are new to student pilots, thus, this article.
Glider – Size, Type
Your instructor should tell you the make and model of the glider you use for each session, or you can ask. Glider should be listed as Manufacturer, Model, Size.
Example: Ozone, Atom 3, Large
Site – LOCATION, MSL, VERT
LOCATION – What flying site were you training at?
MSL – This means Mean Sea Level. Mean, in this case, is “average”. Since tides vary to state a mountain’s height, they use the average sea level to be specific. In the log book, MSL is for the Landing Zone, aka LZ, not the launch.
VERT – This is the vertical elevation of the launch above the LZ. In the US, we mostly use feet, but in most of the world, they use meters.
EXAMPLE
WIND – WEATHER – DIR, VEL, TYPE AIR
DIR – This is simply the direction from which the wind blew during your flights or training. Wind blowing from W to E is called a west wind. If the wind started off SW (southwest), then later blew from the W, you would enter SW – W in the DIR box.
VEL – This means velocity of the wind. In this box, you will put the range of winds you saw while flying that day. If you launched, early in the morning and it was 0 wind, then at the end of the day, you launched in 9 mph winds, you would put down 0 – 9 in this box.
PILOTS CHOICE – Really unclear column, but perhaps you get airsickness. You could track eating habits or medications as you find a fix (there are many, BTW), or you might track some other flight related thing. Really no rule or you can just leave blank?
REMARKS – LAUNCH, ALT GAIN, X-C, MANUEVERS, APPROACH, LANDING ETC.
You might realize that some day in the future it could be fun to see your training days and laugh about how little you knew. This is the place to journal your training, practices, self crtitiques, successes and failures. Make sure to note any new tasks in this box. If you have trouble with any technique, you can mark progress or failures that you can work with your instructor on.
AIR TIME – HR, MIN T
FLT #
Your total flight time for the day. If you want, you can log longer flights, line by line.
If you choose to log a day of training or flying on one line, you put in the number of flights you had that day. On training days, even a tiny hop with a landing just down the hill is still a flight, technically, it is a launch and a landing.
PAGE TOTAL – BROUGHT FORWARD – TOTAL TO DATE
This should be pretty clear, this is where you summarize all of your flying, total # of flights, and total from this page. One note in general is that you do not need to log a line item for each training day. You can summarize the flight time and # of flights day by day. If you need more room for notes, just continue in the Remarks section and leave the preliminaries blank.
