I love logbooks. Ever since I was a student pilot, I've been fascinated by pilot logs. I remember when I bought my first logbook and my instructor made the first entry on the first line: "A/C Orientation, S&L, Area Orientation." I went home and read that one line a hundred times, maybe a thousand.
The book was one of the Jeppesen student logs, with green pages, each holding 13 entries, with no numbers on the pages. I looked at all the empty pages and wondered how long it would take to fill up the book. In the back, there were some pages that were just lined, and I wondered what they might be used for. There also were some pages that had pre-printed signoffs for solo and cross-country flights. As that first page filled up, I spent hours daydreaming about what the pages in my logbook might one day say, what destinations they might record.
On some pages you can see that I flew every day and on others, much less often. In college, when classes and studying and homework and crew practice all took up so much of my time, I didn't get to fly as much as I wanted, but my logbook was always in the top drawer of my desk. I would regularly take it out and read it, to see what I had done, to lift my spirits on days when I wanted to fly. I'd go over the instructor entries for the last couple of lessons, and in a spare hour, pull out my books and review what I had done last.
I'll never forget the thrill of my final preparations for my private checkride. The entries in my logbook show the increased intensity of my training as my checkride approached. Finally, my instructor signed me off. I remember he made a big show out of using the advisory circular that contains all the instructor endorsements, making sure he had the right one, making me read it to verify he had all the letters and numbers in place. It was all very official, except for the scrawled handwriting in my little black-and-green logbook. That part was very personal.
I had the misfortune to fail my private checkride the first time. It was my fault, and I could make all kinds of excuses, but deep down I would know that's just what they are. So I just admit it: I messed up. My simulated engine failure was going to have a questionable outcome if allowed to continue. I was devastated. With luck and some help from the examiner and my instructor, I was able to get retrained that same day and fly that portion of the checkride again. This time I passed. The examiner then pulled out a big red rubber stamp and made a nice show of stamping the back of my logbook. That stamp says, "Private Pilot Flight Test Successfully Completed This Date." It is then signed and dated, 7/19/91, with the aircraft's registration number. Over the years, that same examiner added a number of stamps to the back of the same log: instrument, commercial, multiengine (private, commercial, instrument, and multiengine instructor), and my instrument instructor add-on. The thrill was greatest on my private and instrument rides.
I look at the places that I flew in that first logbook, and the details are recorded in my scratchy, abbreviated handwriting: Kitty Hawk, North Carolina; Daytona Beach, Key West, St. Augustine, Florida; Cape May and Atlantic City, New Jersey; Blacksburg, Virginia; Addison, Texas. I flew into Baltimore-Washington International Airport and thought I had made the big time. Grass runways. I can tell you about my first flights in a taildragger. I took friends and family flying. I can read about each flight and I can remember most of them in startling detail.
I used that first logbook until I finished my CFI training. At that point I bought the big Senior Pilot's Flight Log and Record from Sporty's Pilot Shop. I had a goal now: I wanted to fly for a living, for the airlines. I decided that if I instructed from one end of that book to the other and still didn't have an airline job, I'd find something else to do.
I also borrowed a trick from another CFI. When he endorsed a student's log, he would put the same entry in his own log and have the student sign it. This had three purposes. First, the student was attesting to what had and had not been taught. Second, it kept his own log up to date. Third, it made it pretty hard for someone in an interview to say that he had fudged his logbook, because all those signatures are pretty hard to fake that often. Now I treasure having had those people sign my log. That CFI also did every entry in the same-color ink. His were black. Every entry in my logs since has been in blue.
A logbook becomes a personal diary, a record, something I always stressed to my students. I tried with all my might to avoid making mistakes in their logs. It wasn't long before I learned the shorthand that CFIs use to squeeze as much information as possible onto those tiny lines. The back of the students' own logbooks filled up with solo and cross-country endorsements. Checkride endorsements were entered and signed. I remember well the feeling of coming full circle when I signed off my father for his private checkride. He passed with flying colors, and did it on the first try. (Made sure I knew it, too.)
Personal adventures
That first senior pilot logbook filled quickly. It was mostly time as an instructor, but some adventures were in there as well. I went to the EAA convention in Oshkosh twice, an experience that is almost impossible to put into words. I took that logbook with me and collected a bunch of autographs: Chuck Yeager, Buzz Aldrin (lunar module pilot for Apollo 11), airshow pilot Sean Tucker, Dick and Burt Rutan (of Voyager), airshow pilot Duane Cole, and others. It instantly became one of my most prized possessions.
The log also shows that I flew to Tennessee, courtesy of a student, to attend a homebuilders forum. The trip home was in solid instrument conditions, and I had to do a full ILS approach into Roanoke, Virginia, for fuel. I had not been feeling well, and when we landed, I realized how sick I was. We went to a hotel and I slept for 14 hours. When I woke up I felt great and the skies were a bright blue for the trip home. I learned a valuable lesson about fatigue on that trip.
I went to Jacksonville, Florida, once by way of Myrtle Beach. Once, in the desperate race to get a few hours of multiengine time, I got a ride in a Piper Aztec to Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, and caught an airliner home. The ticket cost less than an equivalent rental, and I still consider it a bargain.
I also did some aerial mapping and photography in four- to six-hour clips, mostly in the summer. The days were long, hot, and exhausting, but the pay was good and the food was free. I watched my multiengine time slowly climb. We had a client who had lost his medical but could afford to fly. He would rent our Aztec, with me as the instructor, and fly long round-robin cross-countries. We always went to no fewer than four airports on every flight, flew the approaches, often stopped for lunch somewhere, and came home. Those were some of the most enjoyable hours I ever had. Another valuable lesson: If you truly love to fly, and you don't have a medical, don't let that stop you. He always insisted that I fly one leg and usually one landing. That was Ted Phillips, and a kinder, more enjoyable, knowledgeable person to know is hard to find. On one of our last flights together, he gave me a heartfelt piece of advice I will never forget: "You can't fly forever. Enjoy every second of it." I have, Ted, I have.
Professional achievements
When I got halfway through that first senior log, my personal goal was realized: I interviewed for a job at an airline, at Comair, and was hired. For the first time, I would be using the second-in-command and the turbine columns in my logbook. After my first day of revenue operations flying the line, I couldn't wait to get to the hotel to record the flights in my logbook on page 68: "First day on the line! IOE w/C. Jordan. GPWS probs on T/O #1, pulled the breakers. One great ldg, one ok in rain @ TLH. Behind, but fun." That first flight also was an ILS to minimums. The destinations were mostly cities in Florida, the flights fairly short. I finished that logbook in 1998. My wife, Lisa, gave me my second senior log. I have always written a quote in the front of my logbooks, and she added her own to this one: "Chip, May all your flights bring you home to me." Indeed.
My second log is mostly jet time, and the destinations reflect it: Bangor, Maine; Montreal, Canada; Houston (Bush and Hobby); Nassau, the Bahamas; 10 different airports in New York; Minneapolis. But it still had general aviation flights in it. Lisa and I went to Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay for our anniversary one year, and spent the night in a bed-and-breakfast. We did the same at Williamsburg, Virginia, another year. On page 76, a cryptic note on March 23 says, "Last trip before strike." What I didn't write was that I went home early from the trip because Lisa thought she was in labor. Turns out, she wasn't. That strike lasted three months, but I flew most every day teaching back at Bay Bridge Airport in Maryland. It seemed we were just back to work when I got stuck in Oklahoma City (page 88 in my logbook) for three days because of September 11, 2001. I wrote a few lines of comments and memories from that day.
I now have two logbooks. I still carry my master log in my flight bag, and I fill it in while in my hotel rooms. I don't want to fall behind. The pages still aren't numbered, so I number them myself, but not for any particular reason. Each book has around 125 pages, each with 16 entries, for a total of 2,000 flights. I'm on senior log number three, and as the pages fill up, I still feel a sense of excitement and a thrill at what I do and what I've done, especially when I add a new city or a new city-pair for the first time. Book three has seen me pass 7,000 hours' total time; fly to the West Coast for the first time; take my daughter Piper on her first flight. It's during this quiet time in a hotel, late at night, that I catch myself flipping back through the pages, reading my remarks to myself, thinking of the people I have flown with and the places I've gone, emergencies I've experienced. Some of those pilots are gone now, having taken that "final flight west," as are a few of the airplanes, lost in accidents. Too many pilots don't keep up their logs. That's a shame, as it can be such a rich history, a reminder of why you wanted to fly in the first place.
Even worse, in my own opinion, is the proliferation of the electronic logbooks. They were inevitable, but that doesn't make it right. Mind you, I understand why they are so popular, especially the ones on handheld computers. With computerized logs, math mistakes all but disappear, and you can figure out down to the second how many hours you have in a multitude of categories, such as time in type, instrument, night flight, single-engine versus multiengine, dual, solo, and so on. For pilots aspiring to the airlines, future job applications will allow transportability from the computer log to the application at the click of a button.
Handwritten history
But computerized logs, like letters written on a word processor, are so impersonal. A couple of my distant relatives flew in World War II, and there is something special about reading their old, handwritten logs, with creased pages covered in pencil. You can see the sweat and oil stains, grimy dirt, notes from the instructors. You can sense the joy that is felt when they write of solos or difficult trips or missions successfully completed. You don't get that from a computerized logbook.
One day, my girls, Piper and Sydney, will be able to read my logs and see where Dad was while they were growing up. I hope they will appreciate the handwritten history, the effort taken to record everything. I like to think that reading my logs will help them understand why it is that I love to fly so much. Eventually, it will help them remember me, to tell their own children stories of me. But for now, it allows me to tell them my stories, and as they get older and fly with me more, to record their own stories for them.
Some time ago I concluded that a log is what you make it. Mine, I've decided, will tell a story, bound in a book, handwritten in blue ink, and on green pages. It won't be a bunch of numbers and columns on a computer. There is no soul in that, and a logbook is a reflection of the soul and personality of its owner.
Chip Wright, of Hebron, Kentucky, is a commercial airline pilot.
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