One of the chores of flying is the detailed records we are required to keep of all the training we’ve received and the flights we’ve flown. The FAA requires meticulous record keeping, and there are training/experience requirements for the various certificates and ratings which you need to establish using your logbook.
In preparation for the Private Pilot check ride last year, and again for the Instrument check ride, I had to fill out the infamous FAA-8710 form, which requires you to total various different kinds of flying you’ve done. But before I could get to that, I had to total up my logbook. Each flight had been dutifully entered into the logbook as they occurred, of course, but I’m not as meticulous about keeping up with the various page totals. So the first task was to sit down, calculator in hand, and sum up the various categories (like number of day or night landings, amount of time flown day or night, instructional or solo, etc.) on each page, and for my entire (thankfully still short) flying experience. Of course, doing these sums by hand (even with a calculator) is a rather error prone process, and after a day of this my logbook had more than a few corrections.
The logbook represents nothing so much as a paper spreadsheet, so I figured there had to be a better way. This is where being a devoted Mac user is a bit of an issue. You figure that Mac users are something like 10% of the market, and pilots are what, less than 0.5% of the adult population? That being the case, pilots who are Mac users are presumably a really tiny market. So, I was actually prepared not to find a single logbook software for the Mac.
There are a few choices on the Windows side, and if push came to shove, I could always use VMWare or use an online service. But, I didn’t want to be forced to use Windows especially if flying becomes as regular an activity as I hope. (It was bad enough that the King School software was Windows only, forcing me into VMWare on a regular basis for the last year.) It’s not that I have anything against Windows, per se. It’s just that having been a long time Mac user, I find Windows awkward to use (in the same way that I’m sure many Windows users would find some Mac conventions quite odd), and it takes me a bit to re-acclimate every time I start up VMWare. I also investigated online options, but didn’t like them much either. For the most part, they were overkill for my needs---most are geared towards professional pilots. And I didn’t like the idea of having my irreplaceable logbook data entrusted to some online service provider that may or may not be around in a few years, and may or may not have an adequate backup strategy. I didn’t like the idea of having to be connected to the internet to access the logbook either.
That’s when I came across LogTen Pro from Coradine Aviation Systems. This software is excellent. Out of the box, it allows you to record an incredible amount of detail about each flight, and is quite frankly a bit overkill for the needs of most private pilots. Clearly, the software is designed to cater to the needs of professionals and even small flight schools or charter operations. But at its most basic level, it’s a spreadsheet with a data entry panel at the bottom of the window. So getting up to speed on its most basic features as a logbook is self-explanatory and quite easy to do.
After a little over a year of use, I’m beginning to appreciate the level of detail that it allows me to keep track of. It also allows a great deal of customization, with various custom data fields. This flexibility came in particularly handy during instrument training when I began to track various types of approaches and holds I had flown.
LogTen Pro, of course, keeps track of various currency requirements. And it gives you “smart groups”---much like the “smart lists” feature in iTunes---which allows you to quickly look at a subset of your flights---say night solo flights, or cross country PIC time. This latter feature has been very useful in keeping track of the various requirements for the commercial certificate.
Where LogTen Pro really shines is in its printed reports feature. It comes with pre-formatted templates for various printed logbook formats in a variety of national requirements. It will, of course, do FAA 8710 forms and generate other summary reports. The printed logs/reports are fully customizable---they are just HTML pages. So if you have a basic working knowledge of HTML, it is pretty straightforward to look at an existing template to figure out how reports are generated and customize your own log/report based on the existing templates. (If you don’t know HTML, unfortunately you are SOL. But it’s pretty easy to learn just enough to be able to customize LogTen Pro logs/reports.)
And if you like to carry around a hardcopy in a nice binder, LogTen Pro works well with the binders and logbook paper from Cirrus/Logbookpro.com.
The documentation is sparse, to put it kindly. (For example, to generate a custom log/report, you need to know what the various data field names are. To figure out what they are requires scouring through the example temples to figure them out. There is no data field documentation you can turn to.) So thank goodness the program is pretty self explanatory, and there is a pretty active user community.
LogTen Pro has an iPhone app to go with it. The iPhone app syncs with the desktop, so you have your most recent flights, as well as various totals and currencies. You can also enter the information for a flight using the iPhone and have it sync up to the desktop. Pretty handy, especially if you are traveling away from your computer.
At $100 for a full license, and $50 for an upgrade from a previous version, the price of entry is pretty steep. Add another $40 for the iPhone app. (Somewhat confusingly, they have, count ‘em 10 versions of the iPhone app---$10 for the student version, $40 for the full version, and $20 for all other versions---with presumably different subset of features enabled for different target markets. I say “presumably” because the differences across the versions aren’t easy to figure out.) As the only game in town for Mac using pilots, I suppose they can charge a premium. Admittedly, their pricing is not entirely out of line with similar products on the PC side. And, to be fair, they have been good about continued development and bug fixes to the product.
Now if only someone would develop an EFB/Flight planning software for the Mac...
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