Homemade logbook for recreational flying

[LiveOak67]

I want to start logging all of my flights and I want to use a simple lined notebook. What needs to be included?

 

[pelagic_one]

Welcome to the forum!

Maybe something like:

• Date
• Time
• Aircraft
• Location
• Airspace Class
• Details
• Flight Time
• Qty Takeoffs
• Qty Landings
• A/C SW Version
• Battery 1 Up Percentage
• Battery 1 Down Percentage
• Battery 2 Up Percentage
• Battery 2 Down Percentage

Then if you’re logging batteries, per battery you want...

• Qty Missions
• Qty Hours
• Avg Up Percentage
• Avg Down Percentage

And your maintenance log would track activity:

• Date
• Aircraft
• Maintenance Detail (i.e. changed props, upgraded firmware, etc)

 

[NLOL]

Beneficial or not, I think a bit differently than you. I start at the front end - planning. A long list of what I want to do: all the settings I want for the flight. Many listed in BOLD, are my usual/default values and I just circle any changes and my planned/actual settings. Things like program versions are prefilled in the blank form, and changed when appropriate to minimize time/effort. Areas to be flown, maps cached, waypoint files, when/where imaging will begin, etc, etc. Thus, I have both a plan and a flight log. I find myself finishing fewer flights and finding I forgot something critical - like taking the planned images.

The plan becomes your pre-flight checklist, and your flight checklist, and your flight log. If you wanted to - a commercial idea here - you could put a nice user interface on the front of this - programmatically extract a lot of the flight log data you mention from the system flight logs, post it all to a summary, and file it all in some logical fashion. But, I wonder, who/how/why/when would find all this history valuable?

The planning though has value. Suppose you plan a long day of shoots - some long - some short. Pre-planning which battery you'll use for which flight, and it's expected state of charge at beginning and end of each flight, knowing when/where you might need a full/partial recharge, etc can greatly improve your chance of completing your mission, and give you early warning of upcoming power issues and adjust accordingly, rather than default inadequate power to the last flight.