September 12, 2024 • 68 mins
Join us in this 'Beyond the Checkride' only episode of the Student Pilot Cast with hosts Kent Shook and Bill Williams as they delve into the intricacies of logging Pilot in Command (PIC) time. They discuss the nuances of FAA regulations, personal flying experiences, and scenarios like instructor flights, safety pilot roles, and questions around cross-country time. Learn how to navigate the complex rules and ensure your logbook entries are accurate. Perfect for student pilots and seasoned aviators alike, this episode is essential for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of flight logging. See the video version of this segment here: https://youtu.be/BGtVT_Sn9Qo
Links:
- Link to the Video of this Beyond the Checkride Segment
- ForeFlight - Integrated Flight App for Pilots - We talk a bit about using Foreflight Logbook for logging flights.
- Federal Register :: ECFR - This is the link to the online federal regulations, including the FARs.
Hope you enjoy the episode and thanks for listening! Visit the SPC website at https://studentpilotcast.com. Please keep the feedback coming. You can use the contact form on the website or send email to bill at student pilot cast dot com. The theme song for our episodes is "To Be an Angel" by the band, "Uncle Seth".
Legal Notice: Remember, any instruction that you hear in this podcast was meant for me and me alone in the situation that we happened to be in at the time. Please do not try to apply anything you see or hear in this episode or any other episode to your own flying. If you have questions about any aspect of your flying, please consult a qualified CFI.
Copyright 2008-2024, studentpilotcast.com and Bill Williams
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Are you ready for a logging extravaganzathat we'll have you check in your log
(00:05):
book for accuracy while learning how toreally understand the regs around logging.
Then you're going to love today'sepisode of the student pilot cast.
Logging for mere mortals.
(00:39):
Welcome back SPC listeners.
I'm pumped to be back with a specialepisode of the student pilot cast during
one of our recent recording sessionsfor beyond the check ride segment.
Kent.
And I realize that we had doneone that went way beyond an hour.
As we dove into a bunchof areas of logging.
Clearly.
(01:00):
We could have broken that topicup into smaller bite sized pieces.
But because we're either lazy, too busy,or we just love talking about flying, even
when it's mostly about the regulationswe decided to just let it ride.
Now I did manage to edit it down to justover an hour, but that's still too long.
To have it as just a segment.
(01:21):
So we'll forgo the training flight today.
To get this valuable information out.
Hope you enjoy it.
And also that you get somegood information out of it.
We've already discussed somelimitations that we didn't know about
in ForeFlight since we recorded this.
We cover briefly how to do some ofthe logging and how you can do some
(01:43):
of it in ForeFlight it wasn't mostlyabout ForeFlight it's mostly about, you
know, how you logged no matter how youdo it, but we did mention ForeFlight
and showed ForeFlight a little bit.
If you're looking at thevideo version of this, so.
See, if you can runacross anything like that.
And let us know about it.
And we may do a follow-upto talk about that as well.
(02:05):
Even better though.
What did we forget?
Or what did we get wrong?
In this beyond the checkride segment.
Uh, reach out to us viaemail@billatstudentpilotcast.com or you
can use the contact form on the websiteif you prefer, but reach out to us and
let us know your, take your storiesor anything that you think we may have
(02:27):
gotten wrong or should have said better.
By the way.
The video version of this segmentis already published on YouTube.
Uh, published it a little bit earlier.
Today.
And you might want to go checkthat out in this case because
Kent will be sharing some visuals.
To help go through the regs as, as wellas some of the interpretations and as
(02:49):
well as using ForeFlight a little bit,like I said, so the video version of
this could actually prove pretty helpful.
You can go to our YouTube channel to.
Find it it's at youtube.com/atstudent pilot cast.
Or you can just search forstudent pilot cast or student
pilot cast logging on YouTube.
There'll also be a link in the show notes.
(03:11):
So lots of ways to find the videos.
So don't forget to go check it out.
While you're there.
Why don't you hit subscribe on ourtiny fledgling YouTube channel as well.
So, thanks for always listeningand thanks for watching.
And enjoy.
So let's get right toit beyond the checkride.
Logging flight time explained.
(03:33):
All right.
Welcome back everybody to anothersegment of beyond the check ride.
I'm here again, as usual with Ken Shook.
How you doing Kent?
Excellent.
Good.
always a good day whenI can talk about flying.
Always is always is.
So I know I introduced these segments,a few episodes ago, and we're
(03:53):
going to continue to release those.
As I said, as segments within the studentpilot cast, but I wanted to make a comment
on it today, just to kind of set thestage a little more for, you know, what
these are all about, we certainly don'twant to give the impression that these
are, you know, sort of the gospel truthabout how you do any of these things
(04:15):
and they're certainly not comprehensive.
In what we're covering, we're mostlywanting to bring these topics up because,
uh, especially Kent and a little bit me,we've had some experience in aviation and,
we've found some things that we've learnedover time that certainly aren't in.
The ACS or what used to be the PTS andthey don't, they aren't required knowledge
(04:40):
to get a certificate or a rating or,you know, things like that, but they
are practically important knowledge.
And these are things that we'velearned since our check rides.
And, we're kind of trying tobring up that question and
disseminate the information so that.
We can start a discussion in theoverall community about these things.
(05:01):
And so we always want to hear feedback.
I know that we've harpedon that quite a bit.
We always want to get feedback from you.
We want to hear stories abouthow you've learned things
beyond your own check rides.
And this is really toopen up the conversation.
We're going to talk aboutour experiences, our stories.
the things that we've run intoand so on, and we want everyone
(05:25):
to add to that conversation.
Anything to add to that, Kent?
I just wanted to make surewe were setting the stage.
Yeah, that sounds great.
And, you know, I hope that eventuallywe'll have enough feedback that we can
even have a, a segment within a segmentwhere we go through feedback every time
and, and talk about it a little more.
Like I said, I like to talk aboutflying, so just a, another way to do
(05:48):
it and to expand the size of our littlecircle around the fire at the hangar.
Right.
That's right.
That's right.
Cool.
So with that being said, whattopic have you got for us today?
Well, this time, kind of the overarchingthing will be the, uh, regulations.
and within that we're going tolook at one that I have seen so
(06:11):
many online arguments and confusionabout, and that is logging time.
I'm, I'm sure you've seen an argumentor two over that in your day.
Oh, for sure.
So, you know, over the years I've,I've actually gotten to the point where
(06:32):
The regulations actually make senseto me, don't tell the FAA or they'll
probably revoke my medical for beingcrazy or something like that, but, um,
There's gotta be somethingwrong with you, right?
yes, yes, and one of the people that I, Ilearned a lot from was a guy by the name
of Ron Levy, who, uh, was a participantin many of those arguments ages ago, But
(06:56):
he actually taught a class at a college.
I can't remember where it was,but, he was out in Maryland.
So somewhere out in that vicinity, he was,uh, a guy who taught a college class in
aviation law, so knew what he was talkingabout, always backed up his statements.
And then by following all thereferences that he provided, I
(07:18):
learned a lot about it myself.
So, I've learned from those onlinediscussions that I've had quite a bit.
really it's all about going andfinding references for your position.
And, so sometimes I will learnthat I was right and sometimes
I'll learn that I was wrong.
And, um,
It's all still learning, right?
(07:38):
exactly.
So what are some of the big, the bigissues that, I mean, the obvious one is,
you know, logging PIC when you're doinginstrument practice, but we'll get it.
We'll hold off on that one for a second.
Hopefully, are there any other biglogging issues that you run into?
Well, there's a couple.
(07:59):
There is the can more than one personlog PIC at the same time, or even
log the time at all at the same time.
The other one is Okay, I'm goingup with an instructor, and I'm
getting my complex endorsement.
How do I log that?
So I
(08:20):
Right?
Right?
Can you, can you log PIC when youdon't have, a high performance
endorsement, for example, or.
Sure.
Something along those linesin a high performance.
Yeah.
Okay.
Good question.
I think I know the answer to that
actually,
the, the first thing here is,don't try to make it make sense.
(08:45):
If you try to make it make sense, rightoff the bat, you'll say, what on earth
is going on, and it won't make any sense.
So,
federal regulations after
yes, yes, if you sit back and wait untilthe end, hopefully by the time we're
done tonight, then it will make sense.
so the, I mean, the first.
(09:07):
thing to understand is that tothe FAA, logging PIC Being the PIC
are completely separate things.
when I say being the PIC, we'llalso use the term acting as the PIC.
That doesn't mean acting like you'renot really a acting PIC as the
(09:29):
person who is being or acting as thepilot in command of the aircraft.
There is always one and only one pilotin command of an aircraft, period.
End of story.
However, there are times when youcan have, I'll put an asterisk
(09:49):
on the first one here, but zeroup to three people logging PIC.
So, Don't let me forget that.
We'll, uh, we'll cover whatthose are here at the end, and
it'll make a little more sense.
so first thing, let's talk about howyou can look this stuff up on your own.
(10:11):
And in fact, I will see if Icould share my screen here.
All right.
So here in my browser window,you'll see, we have gone to ecfr.
gov.
So electronic code of federal regulations.
And what we're looking for hereis title 14 aeronautics and space.
(10:32):
So let's click on that.
And this is an awful lot of stuff becausethis is everything dealing with the
FAA and NASA and all kinds of things.
So.
Pretty much everything that you'regoing to want in terms of aviation
regulations is going to be in thisfirst chapter here, Chapter 1.
(10:54):
So I'll expand that.
And for logging stuff, One of the thingsthat you should have learned right away
as a student pilot is that anythingthat depends on who the pilot is, is 61.
And then general operatingrules are Part 91, so.
Let's go to Subchapter Dhere, where Part 61 is.
(11:16):
Now, there's a differencebetween whether you click on
Part 61 or the title over here.
So if you click on the left,you'll get the Table of Contents.
If you click on the right,you'll get the entire part.
And that is generally what I do,so let's go ahead and do that.
So here we go.
(11:37):
This is part 61.
Everything in part 61.
Now, I happen to know that it's6151 is what we're looking for.
But, you can also just doa quick find for logging.
(12:00):
So, you can see C, D, and E there.
I'm going to scroll back up.
So, there we go.
6151, Pilot Logbooks.
So which questions shallwe address first here?
well, let's do the scenario wherelet's say you just got your private
pilot certificate and you want toadd on something like a complex
(12:23):
or high performance endorsement.
Yep.
That's a good one.
Good, simple one.
now this is all, we'retalking PIC right now.
So 6151E is where we talk about PIC.
So logging pilot and command flight time.
A sport, recreational, private, commercialor airline transport pilot may log
(12:44):
pilot in command time for flights.
And this is the one that reallymatters here right off the bat, except
when logging flight time under 611 59 C, when the pilot is the sole
manipulator of the controls of anaircraft for which the pilot is rated
or has sport pilot privileges for thatcategory and class of aircraft if the
(13:07):
aircraft class rating is appropriate.
So.
That's a mouthful.
let's pick that apart.
So, except when loggingflight time under 61159C.
I happen to know that that is all aboutthe, what's called a second in command
professional development program.
(13:28):
So, that's something thatPart 135 operators can use, if
they have the op spec for it.
and it, changes things a little bit.
So if you're part of one of those SICPDPs, kind of skip everything we're
going to tell you because the SICPDP takes precedence over basically
(13:50):
all of the other logging rules.
Now, if you don't already knowthat, well, what do you need to do?
You need to go and lookat what 61159C says.
So let's go ahead andclick on that and do that.
And you can see when you click on it,this website highlights the section.
A commercial pilot may log second incommand pilot time toward the aeronautical
(14:14):
experience requirements of paragraphA of this section, blah, blah, blah.
Employed by a part one19 certificate holder.
Authorized to conduct operationsunder part 135 of this chapter,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So none of that is applicable tothe scenario that we're in here.
(14:35):
So, you don't need to read.
These little subsections at all.
this just simply isn't applicable.
so that whole exception that youread in a 6151E, it just doesn't
pertain to our scenario anymore.
They're not, uh, they'renot in one of those.
(14:57):
programs.
exactly.
So now I need to find it again.
Okay.
So here we are.
6151 E.
So this exception here.
does not apply.
Now let's pick apart the rest of this.
There's this or, or has sportpilot privileges, blah, blah, blah.
(15:20):
We're talking about somebody who justgot their private pilot certificate.
So that means this wholesection is irrelevant as well.
Yep.
Skip on
So what that means is that effectivelyour person who is just a private pilot,
you know, they're, they're working onsome flight training all under part 91.
(15:41):
So, When the pilot is the solemanipulator of the controls of an
aircraft for which the pilot is rated.
Uh, Oh, what does that mean?
Here's something that you'llfind throughout the regulations.
They don't leave a whole lot ofambiguity in the regulations.
(16:05):
So let's Let's see if we canfind out, what does rated mean?
And where we find that is you can alwayskind of peel the onion on this stuff.
So, definitions relative to part 61.
only are always going to be up in 61.
(16:27):
1.
So if we scroll way back up to thetop, it actually isn't completely
at the top because there are acouple of special federal aviation
regulations up here, but here we go.
Applicability and definitions.
That's what you'll find at in the 0.
1 of pretty much every part.
So what we want to look up hereis look up rated or rating.
(16:55):
It's not here, right?
So next, let's peel the onion.
Let's go out to Subchapter D, Airmen.
Well, nothing really there, becausethe first part in Subchapter D is this
flight simulation training device, etc.
That's not really applicable.
So, peel the onion again.
(17:19):
And you know, I must have clickedon something there that I didn't
really mean to because this iswhat I wanted to be able to see.
We're going to back allthe way out to Part 1.
Definitions and Abbreviations.
And this is applicable toall of the regulations.
So now let's go down We'relooking for rated or rating now.
(17:45):
Let me, okay, public aircraft, youcan see some of this is OEI power.
Yeah, a lot of, a lot of thisstuff is just stuff that is.
Probably in the certification regulations,but right here rating means a statement
that is part of a certificate setsforth special conditions privileges or
(18:08):
limitations so Rating in the contextof are you rated for an aircraft?
means something that is part of acertificate your pilot certificate When
you get your complex endorsement, isit printed on your pilot certificate?
Nope, and it's it's kind of youknow, they give it away in the naming
(18:30):
of You know complex endorsement.
Yeah.
It's an endorsement.
It's not a rating
yep.
So the things that get printed onyour pilot certificate like Airplane
Single Engine Land or InstrumentAirplane, those are ratings and
the endorsements are not ratings.
(18:52):
So, now that we've figured outwhat the rating part means, let's
jump back here into Part 61.
Gonna have to scroll down again.
Okay, so the way we read this now is,we can pretty much start right here.
(19:12):
Logging in pilot in command flight time.
A, we're going to skip overthe stuff that's irrelevant.
Private pilot may log pilot in commandflight time for flights when the pilot is
the sole manipulator of the controls ofan aircraft for which the pilot is rated.
(19:34):
Now, is any of this other stuffeven relevant at this point?
Here's how we check that.
So, you can see we've got theselittle i's, uh, you know, basically
small roman numerals here,
and at the end of every one we'vegot a semicolon, except for,
(19:54):
before this last one, number four,Look at this word right here.
It's an OR.
As long as that is an OR, thatmeans you only have to satisfy
one of those sub conditions.
So that's it.
We've told the story now.
We are able to log that flight time.
(20:15):
So hopefully that, uh, that makes sense.
Yeah, for sure.
I will tell you there's anotherthing that you can look up and
this is my don't argue with me I'vebeen arguing about this subject
for way longer than a lot of people
But this is this is also somethingthat is a really good reference So
(20:39):
it's not at an easy URL like ecfr.
gov.
So I always just Google search for searchFAA chief counsel not counsel like a
group of leaders but counsel as in lawyersC O U N S E L Interpretations, and you
(21:04):
can see it was actually, it was comingup before I even finished there, but,
okay.
So, interpretation search.
Now what we can do is we can put in akeyword, and you can type in something
like PIC or log or, you know, the problemis you'll get a lot of results on those.
(21:29):
So one thing that's easy tosearch for is just search for the
regulation that you're looking for.
So let's do 6151E
and that got it down to two pages.
So, uh, oh no, two results.
Now this one, the Herman interpretation,was actually requested by a
(21:53):
friend of mine, Jason Herman.
In fact, he was on an episode ofthe pilot cast quite a while ago.
I
So, Hey, Jason, if you're listeningout there, hope you're doing well.
what you'll see is you'll see theseletters that are written from the
FAA to the people who request theseinterpretations and anybody can do that.
(22:14):
So, it says he requested clarificationconcerning the logging of pilot in
command flight time under 14 CFR6151E for flights conducted in complex
and or high performance airplanes.
Sounds like the question thatwe were just looking at, right?
Your letter presents a scenario inwhich a pilot who holds a private pilot
certificate with an aircraft singleengine land rating but does not have
(22:35):
endorsements for high performanceor complex airplanes required by
14 CFR 6131ENF to act as a PIC.
Note the word act again that we talkedabout earlier is flying in a high
performance and complex airplane.
Another pilot who has those endorsementsis acting as the PIC for the flight.
Your letter asks whether the pilotlacking the endorsements may log PIC
(22:58):
time for the time that the pilot isthe sole manipulator of the controls.
Does that wording sound familiar?
Yes, it does.
Your letter also asks a similarquestion in the context of a pilot
lacking these endorsements loggingPIC time during a training flight.
The response that follows applies toeither scenario because the regulations
(23:18):
that govern the logging of PIC timewhenever a pilot is the sole manipulator
of the controls of an aircraft.
So, whether you are getting instructionor just flying around with a friend.
Doesn't matter.
Yep.
So section 50, 6151E governs the loggingof PIC time and states and relevant park
(23:39):
that a sport recreational blah blah blah.
I'm not going to reread the whole,the whole thing there, but it does
say right here, the term rated as usedin section 6151E refers to the pilot
holding the appropriate aircraft ratings.
Category, class, and type, if atype rating is required, and these
ratings are listed in 615 andplaced on the pilot certificate.
(24:01):
And then it references anotherinterpretation, 6131 ENF established
additional training and endorsementrequirements before acting.
As PIC of a complex or highperformance airplane, respectively.
Although these endorsements are requiredbefore a pilot may act as PIC, they are
not required to log PIC time if the pilotis rated for and is the sole manipulator
(24:27):
of the controls of the aircraft.
So you're hearing a lotof those same words again.
You know, they're, they're being veryclear about, you know, rated and sole
manipulator and all that kind of stuff.
But here's where the whole don't askit to make sense thing comes in and the
(24:47):
difference between logging and acting.
There is a distinction betweenlogging PIC time and acting as a PIC.
For a pilot to log PIC time, i.
e.
sole manipulator of the controls, apilot must be properly rated in the
aircraft by having the appropriatecategory, class, and type ratings.
For a pilot to Act as a PIC, i.
(25:08):
e.
the pilot who has final authority andresponsibility for the operation and
safety of flight, and you'll hear thosewords in, uh, 61 3 and, a bunch of
other places in the regulations as well.
Pilot must be properly rated in theaircraft and be properly rated and
authorized to conduct the flight.
So,
(25:31):
in your example, being properlyrated and authorized would
include having the endorsementsfor complex and high performance
airplanes as required by 6131 ENF.
Accordingly, in your examples, thepilot may log PIC time if that pilot
is properly rated for the aircraft eventhough that pilot does not have the
required endorsements to act as a PIC.
(25:53):
So, basically, that's the letterfrom the FAA that says all that stuff
that I just said before is true.
Yep.
Yep, exactly.
I
So, when you do have a question aboutstuff like that, it's, it's really a
good idea to go and search those FAAinterpretations because, uh, There are
(26:13):
certain times where something isn'tnecessarily clear to a layman, and it's
always good to see what the lawyers atthe FAA have determined is, you know,
the real meaning of the regulation.
Yep.
Yep.
I actually have a quick storywhere this is very relevant.
A few weeks ago, a friend of ours, tookus on a flight in his great little arrow
(26:41):
that he owns with a few other people.
we went up for breakfast one Saturdaymorning for, up to the high country and
Payson and Merrick, My middle son, whois a private pilot working on some of his
other ratings, he does not have a complexendorsement and an arrow is a complex
(27:03):
airplane, but he flew for, you know, 0.
5 or 0.
6, because our friend, allowed himto, you know, fly the airplane and get
a feel for it on our way back down.
And, when we got back, Isaid, you know, you can.
You can log that 0.
5 or 0.
6, however long you were.
So a manipulator of the controls and,he goes, yeah, but I don't have it.
(27:25):
And I explained this to him, so that, youknow, he, he was able to log that time
because he is time building right now.
He is trying to gainexperience and get time.
So.
The interesting thing about thatis technically that is a, so
I've got a follow up questionfor you based on that scenario.
I told you I was going tothrow some curveballs at you.
(27:48):
So, even though that that airport wasmore than 50 miles away, can he now log
that as cross country time, even thoughhe did not do the takeoff and landing?
So you're wondering what he can log,
He can log PIC,
(28:09):
but can he log it as PIC cross country?
And that took a littledigging for us to figure out.
Yep.
So Now, I believe, let me go back tothe interpretation search here, and
I don't know why, but I know all thepeople who ask these dumb questions.
(28:32):
They aren't actually dumb questions.
I'll, I'll say that, but, okay, Van Zanen.
Alright, so, you know, one thingI'm going to do first is go back to
our definitions hereat the top of part 61.
because that should give us a clue whatthis interpretation is going to say.
(28:54):
So what is the definitionof cross country?
Let me ask you that, Bill.
What's the definition of cross country?
Well, it, it, it dependson why you're logging it.
So that's the important thing isif you're logging it for experience
requirements to obtain other ratings,then there are definitions, based on
(29:18):
that, if you're logging it, becauseyou want a record of your flying, then
that's a different standard, right?
And that really means goingfrom one place to another.
Anywhere that would be a cross country.
But if you want to use it for, forexample, experience requirements for
(29:40):
getting an instrument rating or forgetting a commercial certificate, then
it has to meet certain requirements.
And the standard requirements forcross country for most of those
certificates, has a definition.
yes.
Now, let me show you whatthe basic definition is here.
Cross country time means, except asprovided in paragraphs two through
(30:04):
five, or two through six, rather,
Time acquired during flight conducted bya person who holds a pilot certificate
in an aircraft that includes landing ata point other than the point of departure
and that involves the use of deadreckoning, pilotage, electronic navigation
aids, radio aids, or other navigationsystems to navigate to the landing point.
(30:27):
So.
No mileage requirements, no, you know,specific requirements, but there is
we'll pause there.
So the, the two through six, if welook at those two is for the purpose
of meeting aeronautical experiencerequirements, except for rotorcraft
for a private pilot certificate.
And then you'll see, here's the50 nautical mile requirement
(30:50):
that people are talking about.
for a sport pilot.
I did want it to go back to, whatyou read as the basic definition.
it it does say landing,
Yes.
Landing at the airport.
And so as soon
is the key.
yep, as soon as we got to that point,then it was clear that my son could
(31:13):
not log that as PIC cross country time.
Because it wasn't even, he didn'teven perform a cross country flight
because he was missing a key element.
And that's the landing at a placethat was different than the part of
departure than the point of departure.
I should, I should
say,
Exactly.
but then those othercriteria come into play.
But in this case, they'reirrelevant because he's already
(31:36):
been disqualified from being able to
Right.
And yeah, these are basically for allthe different types of pilot certificate.
Now, I have a suggestion.
This has no legal basis whatsoever.
It's just, making it easier for people.
So, If you want to, you can certainlymark down any flight where the takeoff and
(32:00):
landing are at different places as crosscountry right from the very beginning.
However, when you're working on yourPrivate pilot certificate, your instrument
rating, and your commercial, those allhave the 50 nautical mile requirement.
And you're going to have to totalup the greater than 50 nautical
(32:21):
mile cross country for filling outyour, forms that you fill out to
apply for the new pilot certificate
Oh
for the checkride.
Used to be form 8710 when itwas on paper, but Yeah, whatever
the electronic equivalent is.
IACRA, I
think.
IACRA
Um, so, yeah, to make it easy tofill out your IACRA, don't bother
(32:45):
logging the shorter stuff early
on.
It's just gonna make yourcalculations more difficult.
yeah.
So, I think generally after thecommercial, as long as you have
that landing elsewhere, you're good.
so if we scroll downhere just a little ways,
(33:06):
number six here.
For the ATP certificate, it's straightline distance, more than 50 nautical miles
from the original point of departure.
And that involves the useof dead reckoning, pilotage,
electronic, blah, blah, blah.
So the ATPs don't even haveto land somewhere else.
Right.
(33:27):
that said that has to be more than 50.
So I guess until you have the ATP, it'sworth logging only that greater than 50.
Now, after that.
Nothing really matters anymore.
Yeah, log whatever you
you can, you can log it all at that point.
(33:48):
Yeah.
Excellent.
Well, uh, we didn't even pre planthat, but that, little personal story
kinda helped illustrate how you canget into a rat hole, and then you're
demonstrating perfectly how you canunravel all of these things, peel the
onion, and get down to the bottom of it.
So, that's good stuff.
(34:09):
So this particular letter ofinterpretation, I'm not going to read
the whole thing out, but basicallywhat it says is that If you have three
airports, A, B, and C, and none of themare more than 50 nautical miles from
your home base, which is airport A,but airports B and C have more than 50
(34:33):
nautical miles between them, and youfly A to B to C back to A, Because B
and C have 50 nautical miles betweenthem, if you log your flight from A to
B, separately from your flight from Bto C to A, you can log the B to C to A
(34:55):
flight as cross country, and then not logthe A to B flight as cross country, they
just call that a repositioning flight.
And so, it kind of seems to go a littlebit against the spirit of the regulations,
But, that's one of those questions where,
uh, a lot of people ask, like, does eachleg have to be more than 50 nautical
(35:17):
miles, and that sort of thing, and itdoesn't, like, you know, if you're working
on your private pilot certificate, andyou want to, hop to 10 different airports,
none of which is more than, 10 miles awayfrom the last one, as long as one of those
airports is greater than 50 nautical milesfrom your point of origin, you're good.
Alright,
(35:38):
I've got it.
I've got a couple, I know we've gotsome more scenarios, but if we could
step away from the regs a little bit,give everybody's brain a little bit
of a break, I've got a convention ormaybe a suggestion, question for you.
And this is a real scenario that'sbeen coming up for me lately.
As most folks know, I'm,I've been working on my CFI.
I'm having a hard time.
(35:58):
I'm ready for my check ride, butI'm having a hard time getting
that check ride scheduled.
So it's kind of dragging on for a while.
This is not an uncommonproblem these days.
So, I'm doing all kinds of flyingand a lot of the flying I'm doing, of
course, I'm doing it from the right seatto continue to get more comfortable.
And I'm taking my kids and anybodywho's willing to be a Guinea pig and
(36:19):
I'm teaching them things about flying.
and so I've had the opportunity recently,for example, to take my son, who was
already a private pilot and introducehim to some of the commercial maneuvers,
acting as if I'm in his instructor, ofcourse, in this case, I haven't done
my checkride, so I'm not a CFI yet,so we can't log it as dual, but I can
(36:42):
certainly teach him, demonstrate themaneuver, let him try the maneuver, you
know, those sorts of things, and give himfeedback and act like I'm an instructor.
And so that's what I've been doing.
Now in that case, because he's notlogging dual and I'm not logging
dual given, I, I am acting as PIC.
But unless I'm demonstrating or doingthe landing or something like that.
(37:06):
I'm not able to log PIC timebecause he's logging PIC time as the
sole manipulator of the controls.
He's rated for the aircraft.
So he, he can log that PIC time.
Therefore I can't.
so that's been an interesting thing.
So I've got a question foryou on how you might fill out
a log book in this situation.
(37:27):
So most log books have A columnthat says, I've got my log book
open, so I'm going to be glancingat it says total duration of flight.
And this goes to the scenario I wastalking about earlier when we went
with a friend, flew to breakfast andMerrick flew for part of it, I flew
for part of it on the other direction.
so what would you put, in thetotal duration of flight there?
(37:51):
Would you put the amount of timeyou're logging PIC where you were
the sole manipulator, the controls.
Or would you put the totalduration of the whole flight?
what I would put in there is
the total loggable duration of the flight.
(38:12):
Um, and I actually havesomething in our notes here about
things you can't log as well.
loggable loggable for you.
Is that what you're saying?
correct.
So,
it would Matt.
In other words, you would fill it
out.
You would fill it out.
So it matches your PIC time inthis scenario that I'm giving.
(38:33):
Yes.
So, there are reallytwo kinds of total time.
There's total flight timeand there's total pilot time.
The only difference betweenthem is simulator time.
So, essentially, total flight time,which is in an aircraft, off the
ground, plus your simulator timewould be your total pilot time.
(38:59):
so, you know, you can choose for yourown convention, you know, I have a,
ground trainer, column in my log book.
Um, some would call that simulator.
but you know, you can choosewhether total duration of flight
is pilot time or flight time.
Just because the word is flight, I havechosen to log flight time in that column.
(39:23):
And so if someone asks for totalpilot time, including simulator, in
fact, I've got a, an entry right herewhere you can, um, Maybe see that.
You can see on that second linethere, I have nothing in total
flight time because I logged itover here on the simulator column.
(39:47):
So, that's that.
Now, you probably are only puttingin like a tenth or two of loggable
time demonstrating maneuvers, right?
Yeah, we did like a 1.
2 and because I'm also practicingdemonstrating, I got 0.
3.
Okay.
So I calculated how much time I was solemanipulator of the controls and logged 0.
(40:12):
3 on this particular flight of PICand he logged the rest of it as PIC.
I also did the, the takeoff and landing.
So, that was additional, part of my 0.
3.
Yeah, so, I know that there aresome people who will say things
like, Well, it's your logbook.
You can log whatever you want.
(40:33):
And while that is true,
um, to some extent, it also, you don'twant to make it look like you're lying,
you know, whether you end up applyingfor a job someday or you're having
a chat with the FAA, maybe after aramp check, maybe after an accident,
hopefully not, but you know, if youhave all this stuff in your logbook,
(40:58):
And you have been logging time giventhe columns that are in most logbooks.
Eh, that's going to be a prettyuncomfortable conversation.
Well, why did you log this time in the747 when clearly you're not rated for it?
Yeah.
Well, I like to log passenger time too.
Well, yeah, don't putthat in total time though.
(41:21):
So,
Well, there's anothercolumn to, same question.
I think your answer is going to bepretty obvious, but there's another
column for, you know, in thiscase, airplane single engine land.
So category and class.
So again, it sounds like you wouldlog just the amount of time that
matches what you're able to logas PIC since you're rated in it.
(41:45):
yes.
And then, because, you know, Singleprobably doesn't matter that much,
but you probably right next to thathave an airplane multi engine land
column and that one is going to matter.
you will be asked about that forinsurance paperwork and for applying
for jobs and all that kind of stuff.
So in both of those cases, if you havea flight that you would like to put
(42:08):
into your logbook for memory purposes,let's call it, you know, it's a
flight that you want to remember and.
Frankly, there are times when you,are getting some value from a flight,
even if you can't necessarily log it.
Yeah.
and so in those cases, if youwant to put something like that
(42:30):
in your logbook, does your logbookhave some blank columns in it?
Um, it does.
Yep.
And I've written in things like, um,complex and high performance, things like
that, that allow me to keep track of that.
yeah.
So, you know, looking in my logbookhere, I've got single engine
(42:50):
land, multi engine land, blank.
Helicopter, as flight instructor, um,
Yep.
and the rest of them, Iwould probably actually use.
So what I would suggest, andI, I didn't start doing this
until actually very recently.
I was working for a flight instructor.
(43:12):
Part 135 operator, and I was only ableto log maybe half of my time or so
because we were flying single pilotairplanes and Any time that we were
on a part 91 leg or if we were on apart 135 leg without passengers on
board There's no method for me to beable to log PIC or really log anything
(43:39):
and so I decided that What I would bedoing with that is logging it under
a new column that I call seat time.
So if I was the pilot monitoring, notthe pilot flying, and I was not acting
as pilot in command of a 135 leg,then I would just log it as seat time.
(44:05):
So my total time would be zero,cross country zero, landing zero,
you know, all that stuff, butseat time, I would put that in.
So, in your case, you could log 1.
2 of seat time and 0.
3 of PIC, for example.
So,
Right, right.
I just, that's, I feel like thatis a method to make it very clear
(44:29):
that, hey, this is, this is timethat wasn't necessarily loggable that
I just wanted to have a record of.
Very interesting.
So yeah, we got a, got a little awayfrom the regulations and more about
convention and kind of best practices.
But, but I thought thatwould be valuable as well.
Along those same lines, Kent, whatabout in a situation where you
(44:52):
hand the controls, over to a buddywho's not a rated pilot at all?
So that is the zero asterisk I was talkingabout at the top, because guess what?
You just handed the controls over.
You're no longer thesole manipulator, right?
Yep.
But your buddy is not rated.
(45:14):
And can't log it either.
Zero pilots logging PIC.
it.
Right.
Yep.
But here's the asterisk.
Someone asked for aninterpretation on that one.
And the FAA said.
You know, in that instance, it's okay ifyou log it, even if you're not the, truly
the sole manipulator of the controls.
(45:34):
So, I don't have thatinterpretation handy here,
but,
it, it's almost like saying, let'snot leave PIC time on the table.
kind of, but yeah, I think that the, theFAA is view there was, well, in reality,
you are still in control of the airplane.
So we'll, uh, we'll let you have that one.
(45:57):
And as long as we're on the subject,Let's talk about just the few
different ways that you can log time.
Let me go back to 6151 onelast time here, hopefully.
Alright, 6151E again here.
(46:19):
we're going to just quicklytick off the boxes that will
let you log something as PIC.
So we've already talked about thesole manipulator rule a bunch.
Number two here, when the pilot isthe sole occupant in the aircraft.
So student solo, that's the firsttime that you can log PIC because
(46:43):
if you are the sole occupant of theaircraft, You don't have to be rated.
so I guess technically,what did they call that kid?
Uh, the, the barefoot bandit, I think,
who for a while there was runningaround the country, stealing airplanes.
Mostly the PacificNorthwest, Northwest, Right.
Yeah.
(47:03):
Technically he could lock it.
Yeah.
Uh,
that's
ever going to let him have a pilotcertificate, but that's beside the point.
So, third one here, and this is theone, that is important for, for the
scenario where you have two peoplelogging PIC, uh, where one is being
(47:24):
the safety pilot for the other.
So, number three, when the pilot,except for a holder of a sport or
recreational pilot certificate, actsas pilot in command of an aircraft
for which more than one pilot isrequired under the type certification
of the aircraft or the regulationsunder which the flight is conducted.
So, that covers a bunch of scenarios.
(47:47):
If you are an airline pilot or, anysort of pilot where the aircraft
requires two pilots, then, That'sthe part where it says where more
than one pilot is required under thetype certification of the aircraft.
Now, I mentioned a minuteago flying under Part 135.
(48:10):
So, it says, or the regulationsunder which the flight is conducted.
So, in the particular
including your
where I was working.
right.
For a one 35.
right.
So, in Part 135, it specifically saysthat Two pilots are required on any
(48:33):
leg with paying passengers on board.
There is an exception to that, thatsome carriers have, and it's just
called generally the autopilot inlieu exception, where if you have
a functioning three axis autopilot,you don't need that second pilot.
You do have to have Ops specsthat allow your operation to
(48:57):
use that autopilot and lube.
And we just specifically didnot get that ops spec because
that's not how we operated.
We always did everything with two pilots.
I was able to log legs whereI was not the pilot flying.
Um, as long as we had passengers on board,if I was the acting pilot in command.
(49:20):
so those are the only two scenarioswhere the acting pilot in command
could Gets to log it just by virtueof being the acting pilot in command.
But if you were not the.
Not acting as pilot in commandand it was not your leg to fly.
So you were not the solemanipulator of the controls.
(49:41):
Then you're not logging PIC.
Correct.
There are no boxes Ican tick at that point.
In fact, I couldn't log anything.
So, And man, there's there's so manylittle Sub scenarios you can start
to get in off of these regulations.
It's it gets kind of crazy.
we'll leave those for future.
(50:01):
Yes, in fact, we would lovefeedback if you have questions
on whether you can log something.
I guess while we're on the subject, well,we'll come back to that in just a minute.
There is one more, well, there'sthis number four, which is more
involved in, uh, training flightsand, there's an ATP one down here.
(50:23):
So, um, if you are an ATP actingas pilot in command of an operation
requiring an ATP certificate.
You get to log it then.
Which is also kind of covered by thatone we were talking about a minute ago.
But this is the one that I reallywanted to jump down to is 6151E3.
(50:47):
A Certificated Flight Instructor maylog pilot in command flight time for
all flight time while serving as theauthorized instructor in an operation,
if the instructor is rated to act aspilot in command of that aircraft.
So, There's plenty of situationswhere, you can have people logging,
two people logging PIC if one ofthem is acting as an instructor.
(51:11):
Well, if you're, if you'regiving instruction, then you
are required crew at that point.
So
So let's talk about thegood ol safety pilot thing.
The way that you can get twopilots logging PIC at the
same time, and you're not.
(51:31):
a professional pilot.
That's, that's the scenariowe're talking about.
yeah,
The safety pilot, if the safetypilot is the acting PIC, and this is
important, the safety pilot must be theacting PIC for both pilots to log PIC.
The safety pilot does not haveto be the PIC to log it, period.
(51:57):
So.
Pay attention to who is the PICand is responsible for the flight
because the safety pilot maybe logging either PIC or SIC.
and you know, it's more than justregulations that goes into that.
So, let's say you and Igo flying in my airplane
and, you know, I'm, I'm.
(52:20):
Under the hood and you're my safety pilot.
Well, are you on my insurance?
I'm
not
one reason why, you know?
Right.
So in that case, I'm gonna wantto be the PIC because let's say I
gear the thing up or something likethat, and then you are the PIC.
(52:41):
Well, now the insuranceis gonna deny that claim.
another thing would be, I was justthinking through the, uh, endorsements.
So, my Mooney is bothcomplex and high performance.
You CANNOT act as PIC.
on my airplane if you don'thave those endorsements,
so, um,
(53:04):
Yeah.
so those are a couplethings to think about.
yeah.
You have to, you have to be qualified.
You have to be qualified to act as PIC inthat airplane, obviously, to act as PIC.
correct.
So if it's not an airplane that you can goand fly by yourself, then you should not,
(53:26):
That includes, that include,I wanna bring this up too.
That includes medicals.
Yes,
So you, you, have to have.
All of the requirements to actas PIC, like you said, Kent, if
you can't fly that airplane byyourself, you can't act as PIC.
(53:50):
yeah.
Now, a medical is required, Yeah.
To be the safety pilot anyway, becauseyou're still a required crew member.
medicals are not just required for PICs.
I should say, though, thatBasicMed now does qualify.
For quite a while after theBasicMed rule first came out,
(54:13):
you had to have a legitmedical certificate.
It was, it was just due to the way thatCongress wrote the law requiring the
FAA to do BasicMed in the first place.
They had not addressed that scenario,and the FAA had been dragging their feet
on that whole idea for the longest time.
And so they literally wrote theregulation exactly as Congress
(54:37):
made them, and nothing else.
And that was probably the most glaringissue with the whole thing was that, okay,
now there's this whole scenario where Ican fly the plane myself, but I can't sit
in the right seat and look for traffic.
Right,
But yeah, they did finallyaddress that more recently.
(54:58):
So
Did they address that with aregulation change or did they
address it with an interpretation?
that was
a regulation change.
So technically an interpretationof An interpretation is
never changing a regulation.
It is
merely
a
but they can be
of what the regulation means.
(55:21):
uh, regulation can be ambiguous enoughthat it, it has the same effect though.
Yeah, to an extent.
but yeah, this particular one,it, it was not ambiguous at all.
It, it said, yeah, youneed to have a medical.
it was really the, uh, The basic med ruledidn't say that there was that exception.
(55:42):
So
Right.
anyway, I don't want to get too farinto the whole medical issue, but yes,
to act as pilot in command, you need.
everything.
You need the endorsements, you needthe medical, you need all that stuff.
So, I think that that, you know, if you,if you can't fly the airplane on your
own with friends in the back seat, you'realso not qualified to be the acting P.
(56:06):
I.
C.
That isn't to say that youcan't be the safety pilot.
But, we've covered a couple scenarioshere with, insurance and endorsements and
all that kind of stuff that you should beaware of, and you should also agree before
the flight who the PIC is going to be sothat there's no ambiguity there at all.
(56:29):
You need to know who isin command of that flight.
Right.
so, all that said, Let's say youare the acting PIC safety pilot.
Now we're coming down here to6151E13 when the pilot, except for
(56:49):
sport and recreational, acts aspilot in command of an aircraft.
And I'm going to skip overthe multi pilot aircraft.
One's, section of this here, an aircraftunder which, or for which more than one
pilot is required under the regulationsunder which the flight is conducted.
(57:10):
So, there is a regulation, I can'tremember the number right now.
offhand, but there is a regulationthat requires a safety pilot when
you're wearing a view limiting device.
I'll put it up on the screen right
that is the regulation underwhich the pilot is, or under
which the flight is conducted.
(57:35):
So let's drop down real quick to 6151F,logging of second in command flight time.
right.
That's just what I was going to ask.
Because if you're the safety pilotand you cannot be the acting PIC,
you may still log the time, it willjust be second in command time.
(57:59):
So, 6151 F1 is talkingabout multi pilot aircraft.
6151 F2 is the pertinent regulation here.
So, starting up at the main texthere, a person may log second in
command time Um, only for that flighttime during which the person holds
(58:22):
the appropriate category, class, andinstrument rating if an instrument
rating is required for the flight.
If it's in VMC, it doesn't requirean instrument rating, right?
For the aircraft being flown andmore than one pilot is required
under the type certification of theaircraft or the regulations under
which the flight is being conducted.
So again, There is that regulationsaying that you need the safety pilot.
(58:47):
So that is the regulations underwhich the flight is being conducted.
And again, here you see this wordor before the last subsection, you
know, so at the end of number two,it says, or which means you only
need to check one of these three.
If any of those threeare true, you're good.
(59:08):
So
cool.
Very
cool.
Yeah.
Oh, I do want to suggest one more thing.
I talked about an extracolumn for seat time.
I also have put in an extra columnnow for acting pilot in command time.
And the only reason for that is there arecertain airlines who Disagree with the
(59:35):
FAA on what should be locked as PIC, butthey are not the FAA, so I'm going to log
in my logbook what the FAA says to do.
But, I have seen instructions on airlineapplications that say, for pilot and
command time, we want you to fillout Only the time where you were the
(01:00:00):
acting pilot in command of the flight.
So I have also added an acting PIC column.
Have you gone back and?
Filled it all out forpre your previous career.
Yep, I
have.
It actually wasn't that hard.
Well, so what I did is, I went throughthe aircraft that are in my logbook.
(01:00:25):
And some aircraft, I know I wasnever the acting pilot in command.
And some, you always were.
friends who let me fly their planesand stuff like that, but they were
always with me and that sort of stuff.
there are some, aircraft for which I knewI was always the acting pilot in command.
And then there were, youknow, some aircraft where it
(01:00:47):
could have been either or, so.
I just automated the whole processand said, okay, we'll do a V look
up here and check the tail numberagainst the list here and just
check on whether that aircraft wasan always a never or a sometimes.
And,
um,
interesting.
And tell me how you've donethat in, in your four flight log
(01:01:09):
book, your electronic log book,
so ForeFlight lets you putin, um, custom columns.
Let me actually, uh, go to
ForeFlight
logbook here.
(01:01:37):
All right.
So under settings,
You can see here, all of these onesat the top with checkboxes are columns
that ForeFlight includes, and you candecide whether to display them or not.
So you can see, for example, I don'thave the night vision goggles checked,
(01:02:01):
because I have never flown with nightvision goggles, and probably won't.
Um, yeah, sounds likeit'd be kind of cool,
right?
that sounds pretty fun to
me.
Yeah, so you can see down at thebottom here, I have four custom fields.
and then there's this little newfield link, that you can click
(01:02:25):
and just create a new field.
Let's do that for the heck of it becauseI want to pull up the types you can do.
You can do text, numeric, hours,counter, date, date and time, or toggle.
So you can have just a Um, so thoseare the options for your, your custom
(01:02:50):
field types, but you can have, asfar as I know, they don't have a
limit on the number of custom fields.
but I would check on thatif you're going to do
A ton of
them, uh, because there may be a limit.
That would be hard to manage anyway.
So I would stay away from that if you can.
yeah, yeah.
And one of the things that I did noticeis when you have a custom field, you know,
(01:03:14):
in ForeFlight, they always put the button.
Once you fill in the total time, a lotof the other ones will have a little
button that appears that says, use 1.
5 or whatever you putin for the total time.
The custom fields don't get that.
So you do end up having tomanually key it every time.
Yeah.
I was thinking you could almostmake that column that when you were
just talking about a toggle field.
(01:03:35):
And if you ever had to, if you everhad to add up your total PIC where
you were acting PIC, you could justlook up the total duration of the
flights where that was toggled on.
yeah.
you could, you could
And let me show you how this looks too.
Build my experience reporthere those custom fields.
(01:03:56):
It does by aircraft type So this is forflight standard experience report And
when you have the custom fields if youcome down here to the bottom It shows
each type of flying that I have inYou know acting PIC part 135 and seat
(01:04:18):
hours are all done by aircraft type.
there is the totals at the bottom here.
Very cool.
but yeah, that's what that looks like.
Excellent.
Well, Kent, any other, um, last thingsyou wanted to say about this vast topic?
(01:04:41):
I think we have pretty wellbeat that one to death.
Um, like I said, there are a bunchof little tiny exceptions and
asterisks and stuff like that,that you can get into on this.
And so, you know, Please don'tautomatically go and start logging
everything as PIC just because you heardtwo random guys on a podcast tell you to.
(01:05:05):
Make sure that you can actually backthat up by reading the regulations
that we've pointed you to, readinginterpretations, and you know what?
If you have a question, by all meanssend it in and we'd love to answer it.
We, we like to do theresearch to call us crazy.
Yes, we are that kind of crazy andplease, FAA, don't take our medicals away.
(01:05:27):
Heh heh heh heh heh heh.
Excellent.
Well, Kent, this, thiswas an awesome topic.
Certainly needed.
I know that there's always alot of confusion about this.
And a lot of this discussion helpsme personally to wrap my head around
some of these scenarios that pop up.
When you get a lot more experience inyour career, things are going to pop up.
(01:05:50):
That you're thinking, Hmm,haven't seen this before.
And so these are the types ofthings, especially showing people
how to go find the regs to find theinterpretations and kind of make
their decisions based on those.
So appreciate this great topic,great coverage of the topic.
You never cease to amaze me onthe depth of, of knowledge that
(01:06:13):
you have on some of these things.
So thank you very much.
This was cool.
Yeah, this was fun.
It's always, uh, always funto geek out about this stuff.
All right, Kent.
So we'll see you next timeon, on beyond the check ride.
Thanks again.
Alright, we'll see ya.
(01:06:36):
Okay, everyone.
I hope you liked that topic as usual.
And like I said before, As usual.
And like I said before, we'dlove to get feedback, comments,
your own stories, all of it.
So reach out to us.
Logging is obviously a big topic.
We didn't even cover itnearly comprehensively.
And it took us over an hour.
(01:06:57):
There is a lot of nuance and a lotof detail, but hopefully we covered
the basics and the common scenariosthat people get tripped up on.
More importantly, Kent showed you howto figure it out for yourself, by diving
into the rags and the interpretations.
And so on.
So, I guess it's time to get out there.
And lug some more time.
Are you ready for a logging extravaganzathat we'll have you check in your log
(00:05):
book for accuracy while learning how toreally understand the regs around logging.
Then you're going to love today'sepisode of the student pilot cast.
Logging for mere mortals.
(00:39):
Welcome back SPC listeners.
I'm pumped to be back with a specialepisode of the student pilot cast during
one of our recent recording sessionsfor beyond the check ride segment.
Kent.
And I realize that we had doneone that went way beyond an hour.
As we dove into a bunchof areas of logging.
Clearly.
(01:00):
We could have broken that topicup into smaller bite sized pieces.
But because we're either lazy, too busy,or we just love talking about flying, even
when it's mostly about the regulationswe decided to just let it ride.
Now I did manage to edit it down to justover an hour, but that's still too long.
To have it as just a segment.
(01:21):
So we'll forgo the training flight today.
To get this valuable information out.
Hope you enjoy it.
And also that you get somegood information out of it.
We've already discussed somelimitations that we didn't know about
in ForeFlight since we recorded this.
We cover briefly how to do some ofthe logging and how you can do some
(01:43):
of it in ForeFlight it wasn't mostlyabout ForeFlight it's mostly about, you
know, how you logged no matter how youdo it, but we did mention ForeFlight
and showed ForeFlight a little bit.
If you're looking at thevideo version of this, so.
See, if you can runacross anything like that.
And let us know about it.
And we may do a follow-upto talk about that as well.
(02:05):
Even better though.
What did we forget?
Or what did we get wrong?
In this beyond the checkride segment.
Uh, reach out to us viaemail@billatstudentpilotcast.com or you
can use the contact form on the websiteif you prefer, but reach out to us and
let us know your, take your storiesor anything that you think we may have
(02:27):
gotten wrong or should have said better.
By the way.
The video version of this segmentis already published on YouTube.
Uh, published it a little bit earlier.
Today.
And you might want to go checkthat out in this case because
Kent will be sharing some visuals.
To help go through the regs as, as wellas some of the interpretations and as
(02:49):
well as using ForeFlight a little bit,like I said, so the video version of
this could actually prove pretty helpful.
You can go to our YouTube channel to.
Find it it's at youtube.com/atstudent pilot cast.
Or you can just search forstudent pilot cast or student
pilot cast logging on YouTube.
There'll also be a link in the show notes.
(03:11):
So lots of ways to find the videos.
So don't forget to go check it out.
While you're there.
Why don't you hit subscribe on ourtiny fledgling YouTube channel as well.
So, thanks for always listeningand thanks for watching.
And enjoy.
So let's get right toit beyond the checkride.
Logging flight time explained.
(03:33):
All right.
Welcome back everybody to anothersegment of beyond the check ride.
I'm here again, as usual with Ken Shook.
How you doing Kent?
Excellent.
Good.
always a good day whenI can talk about flying.
Always is always is.
So I know I introduced these segments,a few episodes ago, and we're
(03:53):
going to continue to release those.
As I said, as segments within the studentpilot cast, but I wanted to make a comment
on it today, just to kind of set thestage a little more for, you know, what
these are all about, we certainly don'twant to give the impression that these
are, you know, sort of the gospel truthabout how you do any of these things
(04:15):
and they're certainly not comprehensive.
In what we're covering, we're mostlywanting to bring these topics up because,
uh, especially Kent and a little bit me,we've had some experience in aviation and,
we've found some things that we've learnedover time that certainly aren't in.
The ACS or what used to be the PTS andthey don't, they aren't required knowledge
(04:40):
to get a certificate or a rating or,you know, things like that, but they
are practically important knowledge.
And these are things that we'velearned since our check rides.
And, we're kind of trying tobring up that question and
disseminate the information so that.
We can start a discussion in theoverall community about these things.
(05:01):
And so we always want to hear feedback.
I know that we've harpedon that quite a bit.
We always want to get feedback from you.
We want to hear stories abouthow you've learned things
beyond your own check rides.
And this is really toopen up the conversation.
We're going to talk aboutour experiences, our stories.
the things that we've run intoand so on, and we want everyone
(05:25):
to add to that conversation.
Anything to add to that, Kent?
I just wanted to make surewe were setting the stage.
Yeah, that sounds great.
And, you know, I hope that eventuallywe'll have enough feedback that we can
even have a, a segment within a segmentwhere we go through feedback every time
and, and talk about it a little more.
Like I said, I like to talk aboutflying, so just a, another way to do
(05:48):
it and to expand the size of our littlecircle around the fire at the hangar.
Right.
That's right.
That's right.
Cool.
So with that being said, whattopic have you got for us today?
Well, this time, kind of the overarchingthing will be the, uh, regulations.
and within that we're going tolook at one that I have seen so
(06:11):
many online arguments and confusionabout, and that is logging time.
I'm, I'm sure you've seen an argumentor two over that in your day.
Oh, for sure.
So, you know, over the years I've,I've actually gotten to the point where
(06:32):
The regulations actually make senseto me, don't tell the FAA or they'll
probably revoke my medical for beingcrazy or something like that, but, um,
There's gotta be somethingwrong with you, right?
yes, yes, and one of the people that I, Ilearned a lot from was a guy by the name
of Ron Levy, who, uh, was a participantin many of those arguments ages ago, But
(06:56):
he actually taught a class at a college.
I can't remember where it was,but, he was out in Maryland.
So somewhere out in that vicinity, he was,uh, a guy who taught a college class in
aviation law, so knew what he was talkingabout, always backed up his statements.
And then by following all thereferences that he provided, I
(07:18):
learned a lot about it myself.
So, I've learned from those onlinediscussions that I've had quite a bit.
really it's all about going andfinding references for your position.
And, so sometimes I will learnthat I was right and sometimes
I'll learn that I was wrong.
And, um,
It's all still learning, right?
(07:38):
exactly.
So what are some of the big, the bigissues that, I mean, the obvious one is,
you know, logging PIC when you're doinginstrument practice, but we'll get it.
We'll hold off on that one for a second.
Hopefully, are there any other biglogging issues that you run into?
Well, there's a couple.
(07:59):
There is the can more than one personlog PIC at the same time, or even
log the time at all at the same time.
The other one is Okay, I'm goingup with an instructor, and I'm
getting my complex endorsement.
How do I log that?
So I
(08:20):
Right?
Right?
Can you, can you log PIC when youdon't have, a high performance
endorsement, for example, or.
Sure.
Something along those linesin a high performance.
Yeah.
Okay.
Good question.
I think I know the answer to that
actually,
the, the first thing here is,don't try to make it make sense.
(08:45):
If you try to make it make sense, rightoff the bat, you'll say, what on earth
is going on, and it won't make any sense.
So,
federal regulations after
yes, yes, if you sit back and wait untilthe end, hopefully by the time we're
done tonight, then it will make sense.
so the, I mean, the first.
(09:07):
thing to understand is that tothe FAA, logging PIC Being the PIC
are completely separate things.
when I say being the PIC, we'llalso use the term acting as the PIC.
That doesn't mean acting like you'renot really a acting PIC as the
(09:29):
person who is being or acting as thepilot in command of the aircraft.
There is always one and only one pilotin command of an aircraft, period.
End of story.
However, there are times when youcan have, I'll put an asterisk
(09:49):
on the first one here, but zeroup to three people logging PIC.
So, Don't let me forget that.
We'll, uh, we'll cover whatthose are here at the end, and
it'll make a little more sense.
so first thing, let's talk about howyou can look this stuff up on your own.
(10:11):
And in fact, I will see if Icould share my screen here.
All right.
So here in my browser window,you'll see, we have gone to ecfr.
gov.
So electronic code of federal regulations.
And what we're looking for hereis title 14 aeronautics and space.
(10:32):
So let's click on that.
And this is an awful lot of stuff becausethis is everything dealing with the
FAA and NASA and all kinds of things.
So.
Pretty much everything that you'regoing to want in terms of aviation
regulations is going to be in thisfirst chapter here, Chapter 1.
(10:54):
So I'll expand that.
And for logging stuff, One of the thingsthat you should have learned right away
as a student pilot is that anythingthat depends on who the pilot is, is 61.
And then general operatingrules are Part 91, so.
Let's go to Subchapter Dhere, where Part 61 is.
(11:16):
Now, there's a differencebetween whether you click on
Part 61 or the title over here.
So if you click on the left,you'll get the Table of Contents.
If you click on the right,you'll get the entire part.
And that is generally what I do,so let's go ahead and do that.
So here we go.
(11:37):
This is part 61.
Everything in part 61.
Now, I happen to know that it's6151 is what we're looking for.
But, you can also just doa quick find for logging.
(12:00):
So, you can see C, D, and E there.
I'm going to scroll back up.
So, there we go.
6151, Pilot Logbooks.
So which questions shallwe address first here?
well, let's do the scenario wherelet's say you just got your private
pilot certificate and you want toadd on something like a complex
(12:23):
or high performance endorsement.
Yep.
That's a good one.
Good, simple one.
now this is all, we'retalking PIC right now.
So 6151E is where we talk about PIC.
So logging pilot and command flight time.
A sport, recreational, private, commercialor airline transport pilot may log
(12:44):
pilot in command time for flights.
And this is the one that reallymatters here right off the bat, except
when logging flight time under 611 59 C, when the pilot is the sole
manipulator of the controls of anaircraft for which the pilot is rated
or has sport pilot privileges for thatcategory and class of aircraft if the
(13:07):
aircraft class rating is appropriate.
So.
That's a mouthful.
let's pick that apart.
So, except when loggingflight time under 61159C.
I happen to know that that is all aboutthe, what's called a second in command
professional development program.
(13:28):
So, that's something thatPart 135 operators can use, if
they have the op spec for it.
and it, changes things a little bit.
So if you're part of one of those SICPDPs, kind of skip everything we're
going to tell you because the SICPDP takes precedence over basically
(13:50):
all of the other logging rules.
Now, if you don't already knowthat, well, what do you need to do?
You need to go and lookat what 61159C says.
So let's go ahead andclick on that and do that.
And you can see when you click on it,this website highlights the section.
A commercial pilot may log second incommand pilot time toward the aeronautical
(14:14):
experience requirements of paragraphA of this section, blah, blah, blah.
Employed by a part one19 certificate holder.
Authorized to conduct operationsunder part 135 of this chapter,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So none of that is applicable tothe scenario that we're in here.
(14:35):
So, you don't need to read.
These little subsections at all.
this just simply isn't applicable.
so that whole exception that youread in a 6151E, it just doesn't
pertain to our scenario anymore.
They're not, uh, they'renot in one of those.
(14:57):
programs.
exactly.
So now I need to find it again.
Okay.
So here we are.
6151 E.
So this exception here.
does not apply.
Now let's pick apart the rest of this.
There's this or, or has sportpilot privileges, blah, blah, blah.
(15:20):
We're talking about somebody who justgot their private pilot certificate.
So that means this wholesection is irrelevant as well.
Yep.
Skip on
So what that means is that effectivelyour person who is just a private pilot,
you know, they're, they're working onsome flight training all under part 91.
(15:41):
So, When the pilot is the solemanipulator of the controls of an
aircraft for which the pilot is rated.
Uh, Oh, what does that mean?
Here's something that you'llfind throughout the regulations.
They don't leave a whole lot ofambiguity in the regulations.
(16:05):
So let's Let's see if we canfind out, what does rated mean?
And where we find that is you can alwayskind of peel the onion on this stuff.
So, definitions relative to part 61.
only are always going to be up in 61.
(16:27):
1.
So if we scroll way back up to thetop, it actually isn't completely
at the top because there are acouple of special federal aviation
regulations up here, but here we go.
Applicability and definitions.
That's what you'll find at in the 0.
1 of pretty much every part.
So what we want to look up hereis look up rated or rating.
(16:55):
It's not here, right?
So next, let's peel the onion.
Let's go out to Subchapter D, Airmen.
Well, nothing really there, becausethe first part in Subchapter D is this
flight simulation training device, etc.
That's not really applicable.
So, peel the onion again.
(17:19):
And you know, I must have clickedon something there that I didn't
really mean to because this iswhat I wanted to be able to see.
We're going to back allthe way out to Part 1.
Definitions and Abbreviations.
And this is applicable toall of the regulations.
So now let's go down We'relooking for rated or rating now.
(17:45):
Let me, okay, public aircraft, youcan see some of this is OEI power.
Yeah, a lot of, a lot of thisstuff is just stuff that is.
Probably in the certification regulations,but right here rating means a statement
that is part of a certificate setsforth special conditions privileges or
(18:08):
limitations so Rating in the contextof are you rated for an aircraft?
means something that is part of acertificate your pilot certificate When
you get your complex endorsement, isit printed on your pilot certificate?
Nope, and it's it's kind of youknow, they give it away in the naming
(18:30):
of You know complex endorsement.
Yeah.
It's an endorsement.
It's not a rating
yep.
So the things that get printed onyour pilot certificate like Airplane
Single Engine Land or InstrumentAirplane, those are ratings and
the endorsements are not ratings.
(18:52):
So, now that we've figured outwhat the rating part means, let's
jump back here into Part 61.
Gonna have to scroll down again.
Okay, so the way we read this now is,we can pretty much start right here.
(19:12):
Logging in pilot in command flight time.
A, we're going to skip overthe stuff that's irrelevant.
Private pilot may log pilot in commandflight time for flights when the pilot is
the sole manipulator of the controls ofan aircraft for which the pilot is rated.
(19:34):
Now, is any of this other stuffeven relevant at this point?
Here's how we check that.
So, you can see we've got theselittle i's, uh, you know, basically
small roman numerals here,
and at the end of every one we'vegot a semicolon, except for,
(19:54):
before this last one, number four,Look at this word right here.
It's an OR.
As long as that is an OR, thatmeans you only have to satisfy
one of those sub conditions.
So that's it.
We've told the story now.
We are able to log that flight time.
(20:15):
So hopefully that, uh, that makes sense.
Yeah, for sure.
I will tell you there's anotherthing that you can look up and
this is my don't argue with me I'vebeen arguing about this subject
for way longer than a lot of people
But this is this is also somethingthat is a really good reference So
(20:39):
it's not at an easy URL like ecfr.
gov.
So I always just Google search for searchFAA chief counsel not counsel like a
group of leaders but counsel as in lawyersC O U N S E L Interpretations, and you
(21:04):
can see it was actually, it was comingup before I even finished there, but,
okay.
So, interpretation search.
Now what we can do is we can put in akeyword, and you can type in something
like PIC or log or, you know, the problemis you'll get a lot of results on those.
(21:29):
So one thing that's easy tosearch for is just search for the
regulation that you're looking for.
So let's do 6151E
and that got it down to two pages.
So, uh, oh no, two results.
Now this one, the Herman interpretation,was actually requested by a
(21:53):
friend of mine, Jason Herman.
In fact, he was on an episode ofthe pilot cast quite a while ago.
I
So, Hey, Jason, if you're listeningout there, hope you're doing well.
what you'll see is you'll see theseletters that are written from the
FAA to the people who request theseinterpretations and anybody can do that.
(22:14):
So, it says he requested clarificationconcerning the logging of pilot in
command flight time under 14 CFR6151E for flights conducted in complex
and or high performance airplanes.
Sounds like the question thatwe were just looking at, right?
Your letter presents a scenario inwhich a pilot who holds a private pilot
certificate with an aircraft singleengine land rating but does not have
(22:35):
endorsements for high performanceor complex airplanes required by
14 CFR 6131ENF to act as a PIC.
Note the word act again that we talkedabout earlier is flying in a high
performance and complex airplane.
Another pilot who has those endorsementsis acting as the PIC for the flight.
Your letter asks whether the pilotlacking the endorsements may log PIC
(22:58):
time for the time that the pilot isthe sole manipulator of the controls.
Does that wording sound familiar?
Yes, it does.
Your letter also asks a similarquestion in the context of a pilot
lacking these endorsements loggingPIC time during a training flight.
The response that follows applies toeither scenario because the regulations
(23:18):
that govern the logging of PIC timewhenever a pilot is the sole manipulator
of the controls of an aircraft.
So, whether you are getting instructionor just flying around with a friend.
Doesn't matter.
Yep.
So section 50, 6151E governs the loggingof PIC time and states and relevant park
(23:39):
that a sport recreational blah blah blah.
I'm not going to reread the whole,the whole thing there, but it does
say right here, the term rated as usedin section 6151E refers to the pilot
holding the appropriate aircraft ratings.
Category, class, and type, if atype rating is required, and these
ratings are listed in 615 andplaced on the pilot certificate.
(24:01):
And then it references anotherinterpretation, 6131 ENF established
additional training and endorsementrequirements before acting.
As PIC of a complex or highperformance airplane, respectively.
Although these endorsements are requiredbefore a pilot may act as PIC, they are
not required to log PIC time if the pilotis rated for and is the sole manipulator
(24:27):
of the controls of the aircraft.
So you're hearing a lotof those same words again.
You know, they're, they're being veryclear about, you know, rated and sole
manipulator and all that kind of stuff.
But here's where the whole don't askit to make sense thing comes in and the
(24:47):
difference between logging and acting.
There is a distinction betweenlogging PIC time and acting as a PIC.
For a pilot to log PIC time, i.
e.
sole manipulator of the controls, apilot must be properly rated in the
aircraft by having the appropriatecategory, class, and type ratings.
For a pilot to Act as a PIC, i.
(25:08):
e.
the pilot who has final authority andresponsibility for the operation and
safety of flight, and you'll hear thosewords in, uh, 61 3 and, a bunch of
other places in the regulations as well.
Pilot must be properly rated in theaircraft and be properly rated and
authorized to conduct the flight.
So,
(25:31):
in your example, being properlyrated and authorized would
include having the endorsementsfor complex and high performance
airplanes as required by 6131 ENF.
Accordingly, in your examples, thepilot may log PIC time if that pilot
is properly rated for the aircraft eventhough that pilot does not have the
required endorsements to act as a PIC.
(25:53):
So, basically, that's the letterfrom the FAA that says all that stuff
that I just said before is true.
Yep.
Yep, exactly.
I
So, when you do have a question aboutstuff like that, it's, it's really a
good idea to go and search those FAAinterpretations because, uh, There are
(26:13):
certain times where something isn'tnecessarily clear to a layman, and it's
always good to see what the lawyers atthe FAA have determined is, you know,
the real meaning of the regulation.
Yep.
Yep.
I actually have a quick storywhere this is very relevant.
A few weeks ago, a friend of ours, tookus on a flight in his great little arrow
(26:41):
that he owns with a few other people.
we went up for breakfast one Saturdaymorning for, up to the high country and
Payson and Merrick, My middle son, whois a private pilot working on some of his
other ratings, he does not have a complexendorsement and an arrow is a complex
(27:03):
airplane, but he flew for, you know, 0.
5 or 0.
6, because our friend, allowed himto, you know, fly the airplane and get
a feel for it on our way back down.
And, when we got back, Isaid, you know, you can.
You can log that 0.
5 or 0.
6, however long you were.
So a manipulator of the controls and,he goes, yeah, but I don't have it.
(27:25):
And I explained this to him, so that, youknow, he, he was able to log that time
because he is time building right now.
He is trying to gainexperience and get time.
So.
The interesting thing about thatis technically that is a, so
I've got a follow up questionfor you based on that scenario.
I told you I was going tothrow some curveballs at you.
(27:48):
So, even though that that airport wasmore than 50 miles away, can he now log
that as cross country time, even thoughhe did not do the takeoff and landing?
So you're wondering what he can log,
He can log PIC,
(28:09):
but can he log it as PIC cross country?
And that took a littledigging for us to figure out.
Yep.
So Now, I believe, let me go back tothe interpretation search here, and
I don't know why, but I know all thepeople who ask these dumb questions.
(28:32):
They aren't actually dumb questions.
I'll, I'll say that, but, okay, Van Zanen.
Alright, so, you know, one thingI'm going to do first is go back to
our definitions hereat the top of part 61.
because that should give us a clue whatthis interpretation is going to say.
(28:54):
So what is the definitionof cross country?
Let me ask you that, Bill.
What's the definition of cross country?
Well, it, it, it dependson why you're logging it.
So that's the important thing isif you're logging it for experience
requirements to obtain other ratings,then there are definitions, based on
(29:18):
that, if you're logging it, becauseyou want a record of your flying, then
that's a different standard, right?
And that really means goingfrom one place to another.
Anywhere that would be a cross country.
But if you want to use it for, forexample, experience requirements for
(29:40):
getting an instrument rating or forgetting a commercial certificate, then
it has to meet certain requirements.
And the standard requirements forcross country for most of those
certificates, has a definition.
yes.
Now, let me show you whatthe basic definition is here.
Cross country time means, except asprovided in paragraphs two through
(30:04):
five, or two through six, rather,
Time acquired during flight conducted bya person who holds a pilot certificate
in an aircraft that includes landing ata point other than the point of departure
and that involves the use of deadreckoning, pilotage, electronic navigation
aids, radio aids, or other navigationsystems to navigate to the landing point.
(30:27):
So.
No mileage requirements, no, you know,specific requirements, but there is
we'll pause there.
So the, the two through six, if welook at those two is for the purpose
of meeting aeronautical experiencerequirements, except for rotorcraft
for a private pilot certificate.
And then you'll see, here's the50 nautical mile requirement
(30:50):
that people are talking about.
for a sport pilot.
I did want it to go back to, whatyou read as the basic definition.
it it does say landing,
Yes.
Landing at the airport.
And so as soon
is the key.
yep, as soon as we got to that point,then it was clear that my son could
(31:13):
not log that as PIC cross country time.
Because it wasn't even, he didn'teven perform a cross country flight
because he was missing a key element.
And that's the landing at a placethat was different than the part of
departure than the point of departure.
I should, I should
say,
Exactly.
but then those othercriteria come into play.
But in this case, they'reirrelevant because he's already
(31:36):
been disqualified from being able to
Right.
And yeah, these are basically for allthe different types of pilot certificate.
Now, I have a suggestion.
This has no legal basis whatsoever.
It's just, making it easier for people.
So, If you want to, you can certainlymark down any flight where the takeoff and
(32:00):
landing are at different places as crosscountry right from the very beginning.
However, when you're working on yourPrivate pilot certificate, your instrument
rating, and your commercial, those allhave the 50 nautical mile requirement.
And you're going to have to totalup the greater than 50 nautical
(32:21):
mile cross country for filling outyour, forms that you fill out to
apply for the new pilot certificate
Oh
for the checkride.
Used to be form 8710 when itwas on paper, but Yeah, whatever
the electronic equivalent is.
IACRA, I
think.
IACRA
Um, so, yeah, to make it easy tofill out your IACRA, don't bother
(32:45):
logging the shorter stuff early
on.
It's just gonna make yourcalculations more difficult.
yeah.
So, I think generally after thecommercial, as long as you have
that landing elsewhere, you're good.
so if we scroll downhere just a little ways,
(33:06):
number six here.
For the ATP certificate, it's straightline distance, more than 50 nautical miles
from the original point of departure.
And that involves the useof dead reckoning, pilotage,
electronic, blah, blah, blah.
So the ATPs don't even haveto land somewhere else.
Right.
(33:27):
that said that has to be more than 50.
So I guess until you have the ATP, it'sworth logging only that greater than 50.
Now, after that.
Nothing really matters anymore.
Yeah, log whatever you
you can, you can log it all at that point.
(33:48):
Yeah.
Excellent.
Well, uh, we didn't even pre planthat, but that, little personal story
kinda helped illustrate how you canget into a rat hole, and then you're
demonstrating perfectly how you canunravel all of these things, peel the
onion, and get down to the bottom of it.
So, that's good stuff.
(34:09):
So this particular letter ofinterpretation, I'm not going to read
the whole thing out, but basicallywhat it says is that If you have three
airports, A, B, and C, and none of themare more than 50 nautical miles from
your home base, which is airport A,but airports B and C have more than 50
(34:33):
nautical miles between them, and youfly A to B to C back to A, Because B
and C have 50 nautical miles betweenthem, if you log your flight from A to
B, separately from your flight from Bto C to A, you can log the B to C to A
(34:55):
flight as cross country, and then not logthe A to B flight as cross country, they
just call that a repositioning flight.
And so, it kind of seems to go a littlebit against the spirit of the regulations,
But, that's one of those questions where,
uh, a lot of people ask, like, does eachleg have to be more than 50 nautical
(35:17):
miles, and that sort of thing, and itdoesn't, like, you know, if you're working
on your private pilot certificate, andyou want to, hop to 10 different airports,
none of which is more than, 10 miles awayfrom the last one, as long as one of those
airports is greater than 50 nautical milesfrom your point of origin, you're good.
Alright,
(35:38):
I've got it.
I've got a couple, I know we've gotsome more scenarios, but if we could
step away from the regs a little bit,give everybody's brain a little bit
of a break, I've got a convention ormaybe a suggestion, question for you.
And this is a real scenario that'sbeen coming up for me lately.
As most folks know, I'm,I've been working on my CFI.
I'm having a hard time.
(35:58):
I'm ready for my check ride, butI'm having a hard time getting
that check ride scheduled.
So it's kind of dragging on for a while.
This is not an uncommonproblem these days.
So, I'm doing all kinds of flyingand a lot of the flying I'm doing, of
course, I'm doing it from the right seatto continue to get more comfortable.
And I'm taking my kids and anybodywho's willing to be a Guinea pig and
(36:19):
I'm teaching them things about flying.
and so I've had the opportunity recently,for example, to take my son, who was
already a private pilot and introducehim to some of the commercial maneuvers,
acting as if I'm in his instructor, ofcourse, in this case, I haven't done
my checkride, so I'm not a CFI yet,so we can't log it as dual, but I can
(36:42):
certainly teach him, demonstrate themaneuver, let him try the maneuver, you
know, those sorts of things, and give himfeedback and act like I'm an instructor.
And so that's what I've been doing.
Now in that case, because he's notlogging dual and I'm not logging
dual given, I, I am acting as PIC.
But unless I'm demonstrating or doingthe landing or something like that.
(37:06):
I'm not able to log PIC timebecause he's logging PIC time as the
sole manipulator of the controls.
He's rated for the aircraft.
So he, he can log that PIC time.
Therefore I can't.
so that's been an interesting thing.
So I've got a question foryou on how you might fill out
a log book in this situation.
(37:27):
So most log books have A columnthat says, I've got my log book
open, so I'm going to be glancingat it says total duration of flight.
And this goes to the scenario I wastalking about earlier when we went
with a friend, flew to breakfast andMerrick flew for part of it, I flew
for part of it on the other direction.
so what would you put, in thetotal duration of flight there?
(37:51):
Would you put the amount of timeyou're logging PIC where you were
the sole manipulator, the controls.
Or would you put the totalduration of the whole flight?
what I would put in there is
the total loggable duration of the flight.
(38:12):
Um, and I actually havesomething in our notes here about
things you can't log as well.
loggable loggable for you.
Is that what you're saying?
correct.
So,
it would Matt.
In other words, you would fill it
out.
You would fill it out.
So it matches your PIC time inthis scenario that I'm giving.
(38:33):
Yes.
So, there are reallytwo kinds of total time.
There's total flight timeand there's total pilot time.
The only difference betweenthem is simulator time.
So, essentially, total flight time,which is in an aircraft, off the
ground, plus your simulator timewould be your total pilot time.
(38:59):
so, you know, you can choose for yourown convention, you know, I have a,
ground trainer, column in my log book.
Um, some would call that simulator.
but you know, you can choosewhether total duration of flight
is pilot time or flight time.
Just because the word is flight, I havechosen to log flight time in that column.
(39:23):
And so if someone asks for totalpilot time, including simulator, in
fact, I've got a, an entry right herewhere you can, um, Maybe see that.
You can see on that second linethere, I have nothing in total
flight time because I logged itover here on the simulator column.
(39:47):
So, that's that.
Now, you probably are only puttingin like a tenth or two of loggable
time demonstrating maneuvers, right?
Yeah, we did like a 1.
2 and because I'm also practicingdemonstrating, I got 0.
3.
Okay.
So I calculated how much time I was solemanipulator of the controls and logged 0.
(40:12):
3 on this particular flight of PICand he logged the rest of it as PIC.
I also did the, the takeoff and landing.
So, that was additional, part of my 0.
3.
Yeah, so, I know that there aresome people who will say things
like, Well, it's your logbook.
You can log whatever you want.
(40:33):
And while that is true,
um, to some extent, it also, you don'twant to make it look like you're lying,
you know, whether you end up applyingfor a job someday or you're having
a chat with the FAA, maybe after aramp check, maybe after an accident,
hopefully not, but you know, if youhave all this stuff in your logbook,
(40:58):
And you have been logging time giventhe columns that are in most logbooks.
Eh, that's going to be a prettyuncomfortable conversation.
Well, why did you log this time in the747 when clearly you're not rated for it?
Yeah.
Well, I like to log passenger time too.
Well, yeah, don't putthat in total time though.
(41:21):
So,
Well, there's anothercolumn to, same question.
I think your answer is going to bepretty obvious, but there's another
column for, you know, in thiscase, airplane single engine land.
So category and class.
So again, it sounds like you wouldlog just the amount of time that
matches what you're able to logas PIC since you're rated in it.
(41:45):
yes.
And then, because, you know, Singleprobably doesn't matter that much,
but you probably right next to thathave an airplane multi engine land
column and that one is going to matter.
you will be asked about that forinsurance paperwork and for applying
for jobs and all that kind of stuff.
So in both of those cases, if you havea flight that you would like to put
(42:08):
into your logbook for memory purposes,let's call it, you know, it's a
flight that you want to remember and.
Frankly, there are times when you,are getting some value from a flight,
even if you can't necessarily log it.
Yeah.
and so in those cases, if youwant to put something like that
(42:30):
in your logbook, does your logbookhave some blank columns in it?
Um, it does.
Yep.
And I've written in things like, um,complex and high performance, things like
that, that allow me to keep track of that.
yeah.
So, you know, looking in my logbookhere, I've got single engine
(42:50):
land, multi engine land, blank.
Helicopter, as flight instructor, um,
Yep.
and the rest of them, Iwould probably actually use.
So what I would suggest, andI, I didn't start doing this
until actually very recently.
I was working for a flight instructor.
(43:12):
Part 135 operator, and I was only ableto log maybe half of my time or so
because we were flying single pilotairplanes and Any time that we were
on a part 91 leg or if we were on apart 135 leg without passengers on
board There's no method for me to beable to log PIC or really log anything
(43:39):
and so I decided that What I would bedoing with that is logging it under
a new column that I call seat time.
So if I was the pilot monitoring, notthe pilot flying, and I was not acting
as pilot in command of a 135 leg,then I would just log it as seat time.
(44:05):
So my total time would be zero,cross country zero, landing zero,
you know, all that stuff, butseat time, I would put that in.
So, in your case, you could log 1.
2 of seat time and 0.
3 of PIC, for example.
So,
Right, right.
I just, that's, I feel like thatis a method to make it very clear
(44:29):
that, hey, this is, this is timethat wasn't necessarily loggable that
I just wanted to have a record of.
Very interesting.
So yeah, we got a, got a little awayfrom the regulations and more about
convention and kind of best practices.
But, but I thought thatwould be valuable as well.
Along those same lines, Kent, whatabout in a situation where you
(44:52):
hand the controls, over to a buddywho's not a rated pilot at all?
So that is the zero asterisk I was talkingabout at the top, because guess what?
You just handed the controls over.
You're no longer thesole manipulator, right?
Yep.
But your buddy is not rated.
(45:14):
And can't log it either.
Zero pilots logging PIC.
it.
Right.
Yep.
But here's the asterisk.
Someone asked for aninterpretation on that one.
And the FAA said.
You know, in that instance, it's okay ifyou log it, even if you're not the, truly
the sole manipulator of the controls.
(45:34):
So, I don't have thatinterpretation handy here,
but,
it, it's almost like saying, let'snot leave PIC time on the table.
kind of, but yeah, I think that the, theFAA is view there was, well, in reality,
you are still in control of the airplane.
So we'll, uh, we'll let you have that one.
(45:57):
And as long as we're on the subject,Let's talk about just the few
different ways that you can log time.
Let me go back to 6151 onelast time here, hopefully.
Alright, 6151E again here.
(46:19):
we're going to just quicklytick off the boxes that will
let you log something as PIC.
So we've already talked about thesole manipulator rule a bunch.
Number two here, when the pilot isthe sole occupant in the aircraft.
So student solo, that's the firsttime that you can log PIC because
(46:43):
if you are the sole occupant of theaircraft, You don't have to be rated.
so I guess technically,what did they call that kid?
Uh, the, the barefoot bandit, I think,
who for a while there was runningaround the country, stealing airplanes.
Mostly the PacificNorthwest, Northwest, Right.
Yeah.
(47:03):
Technically he could lock it.
Yeah.
Uh,
that's
ever going to let him have a pilotcertificate, but that's beside the point.
So, third one here, and this is theone, that is important for, for the
scenario where you have two peoplelogging PIC, uh, where one is being
(47:24):
the safety pilot for the other.
So, number three, when the pilot,except for a holder of a sport or
recreational pilot certificate, actsas pilot in command of an aircraft
for which more than one pilot isrequired under the type certification
of the aircraft or the regulationsunder which the flight is conducted.
So, that covers a bunch of scenarios.
(47:47):
If you are an airline pilot or, anysort of pilot where the aircraft
requires two pilots, then, That'sthe part where it says where more
than one pilot is required under thetype certification of the aircraft.
Now, I mentioned a minuteago flying under Part 135.
(48:10):
So, it says, or the regulationsunder which the flight is conducted.
So, in the particular
including your
where I was working.
right.
For a one 35.
right.
So, in Part 135, it specifically saysthat Two pilots are required on any
(48:33):
leg with paying passengers on board.
There is an exception to that, thatsome carriers have, and it's just
called generally the autopilot inlieu exception, where if you have
a functioning three axis autopilot,you don't need that second pilot.
You do have to have Ops specsthat allow your operation to
(48:57):
use that autopilot and lube.
And we just specifically didnot get that ops spec because
that's not how we operated.
We always did everything with two pilots.
I was able to log legs whereI was not the pilot flying.
Um, as long as we had passengers on board,if I was the acting pilot in command.
(49:20):
so those are the only two scenarioswhere the acting pilot in command
could Gets to log it just by virtueof being the acting pilot in command.
But if you were not the.
Not acting as pilot in commandand it was not your leg to fly.
So you were not the solemanipulator of the controls.
(49:41):
Then you're not logging PIC.
Correct.
There are no boxes Ican tick at that point.
In fact, I couldn't log anything.
So, And man, there's there's so manylittle Sub scenarios you can start
to get in off of these regulations.
It's it gets kind of crazy.
we'll leave those for future.
(50:01):
Yes, in fact, we would lovefeedback if you have questions
on whether you can log something.
I guess while we're on the subject, well,we'll come back to that in just a minute.
There is one more, well, there'sthis number four, which is more
involved in, uh, training flightsand, there's an ATP one down here.
(50:23):
So, um, if you are an ATP actingas pilot in command of an operation
requiring an ATP certificate.
You get to log it then.
Which is also kind of covered by thatone we were talking about a minute ago.
But this is the one that I reallywanted to jump down to is 6151E3.
(50:47):
A Certificated Flight Instructor maylog pilot in command flight time for
all flight time while serving as theauthorized instructor in an operation,
if the instructor is rated to act aspilot in command of that aircraft.
So, There's plenty of situationswhere, you can have people logging,
two people logging PIC if one ofthem is acting as an instructor.
(51:11):
Well, if you're, if you'regiving instruction, then you
are required crew at that point.
So
So let's talk about thegood ol safety pilot thing.
The way that you can get twopilots logging PIC at the
same time, and you're not.
(51:31):
a professional pilot.
That's, that's the scenariowe're talking about.
yeah,
The safety pilot, if the safetypilot is the acting PIC, and this is
important, the safety pilot must be theacting PIC for both pilots to log PIC.
The safety pilot does not haveto be the PIC to log it, period.
(51:57):
So.
Pay attention to who is the PICand is responsible for the flight
because the safety pilot maybe logging either PIC or SIC.
and you know, it's more than justregulations that goes into that.
So, let's say you and Igo flying in my airplane
and, you know, I'm, I'm.
(52:20):
Under the hood and you're my safety pilot.
Well, are you on my insurance?
I'm
not
one reason why, you know?
Right.
So in that case, I'm gonna wantto be the PIC because let's say I
gear the thing up or something likethat, and then you are the PIC.
(52:41):
Well, now the insuranceis gonna deny that claim.
another thing would be, I was justthinking through the, uh, endorsements.
So, my Mooney is bothcomplex and high performance.
You CANNOT act as PIC.
on my airplane if you don'thave those endorsements,
so, um,
(53:04):
Yeah.
so those are a couplethings to think about.
yeah.
You have to, you have to be qualified.
You have to be qualified to act as PIC inthat airplane, obviously, to act as PIC.
correct.
So if it's not an airplane that you can goand fly by yourself, then you should not,
(53:26):
That includes, that include,I wanna bring this up too.
That includes medicals.
Yes,
So you, you, have to have.
All of the requirements to actas PIC, like you said, Kent, if
you can't fly that airplane byyourself, you can't act as PIC.
(53:50):
yeah.
Now, a medical is required, Yeah.
To be the safety pilot anyway, becauseyou're still a required crew member.
medicals are not just required for PICs.
I should say, though, thatBasicMed now does qualify.
For quite a while after theBasicMed rule first came out,
(54:13):
you had to have a legitmedical certificate.
It was, it was just due to the way thatCongress wrote the law requiring the
FAA to do BasicMed in the first place.
They had not addressed that scenario,and the FAA had been dragging their feet
on that whole idea for the longest time.
And so they literally wrote theregulation exactly as Congress
(54:37):
made them, and nothing else.
And that was probably the most glaringissue with the whole thing was that, okay,
now there's this whole scenario where Ican fly the plane myself, but I can't sit
in the right seat and look for traffic.
Right,
But yeah, they did finallyaddress that more recently.
(54:58):
So
Did they address that with aregulation change or did they
address it with an interpretation?
that was
a regulation change.
So technically an interpretationof An interpretation is
never changing a regulation.
It is
merely
a
but they can be
of what the regulation means.
(55:21):
uh, regulation can be ambiguous enoughthat it, it has the same effect though.
Yeah, to an extent.
but yeah, this particular one,it, it was not ambiguous at all.
It, it said, yeah, youneed to have a medical.
it was really the, uh, The basic med ruledidn't say that there was that exception.
(55:42):
So
Right.
anyway, I don't want to get too farinto the whole medical issue, but yes,
to act as pilot in command, you need.
everything.
You need the endorsements, you needthe medical, you need all that stuff.
So, I think that that, you know, if you,if you can't fly the airplane on your
own with friends in the back seat, you'realso not qualified to be the acting P.
(56:06):
I.
C.
That isn't to say that youcan't be the safety pilot.
But, we've covered a couple scenarioshere with, insurance and endorsements and
all that kind of stuff that you should beaware of, and you should also agree before
the flight who the PIC is going to be sothat there's no ambiguity there at all.
(56:29):
You need to know who isin command of that flight.
Right.
so, all that said, Let's say youare the acting PIC safety pilot.
Now we're coming down here to6151E13 when the pilot, except for
(56:49):
sport and recreational, acts aspilot in command of an aircraft.
And I'm going to skip overthe multi pilot aircraft.
One's, section of this here, an aircraftunder which, or for which more than one
pilot is required under the regulationsunder which the flight is conducted.
(57:10):
So, there is a regulation, I can'tremember the number right now.
offhand, but there is a regulationthat requires a safety pilot when
you're wearing a view limiting device.
I'll put it up on the screen right
that is the regulation underwhich the pilot is, or under
which the flight is conducted.
(57:35):
So let's drop down real quick to 6151F,logging of second in command flight time.
right.
That's just what I was going to ask.
Because if you're the safety pilotand you cannot be the acting PIC,
you may still log the time, it willjust be second in command time.
(57:59):
So, 6151 F1 is talkingabout multi pilot aircraft.
6151 F2 is the pertinent regulation here.
So, starting up at the main texthere, a person may log second in
command time Um, only for that flighttime during which the person holds
(58:22):
the appropriate category, class, andinstrument rating if an instrument
rating is required for the flight.
If it's in VMC, it doesn't requirean instrument rating, right?
For the aircraft being flown andmore than one pilot is required
under the type certification of theaircraft or the regulations under
which the flight is being conducted.
So again, There is that regulationsaying that you need the safety pilot.
(58:47):
So that is the regulations underwhich the flight is being conducted.
And again, here you see this wordor before the last subsection, you
know, so at the end of number two,it says, or which means you only
need to check one of these three.
If any of those threeare true, you're good.
(59:08):
So
cool.
Very
cool.
Yeah.
Oh, I do want to suggest one more thing.
I talked about an extracolumn for seat time.
I also have put in an extra columnnow for acting pilot in command time.
And the only reason for that is there arecertain airlines who Disagree with the
(59:35):
FAA on what should be locked as PIC, butthey are not the FAA, so I'm going to log
in my logbook what the FAA says to do.
But, I have seen instructions on airlineapplications that say, for pilot and
command time, we want you to fillout Only the time where you were the
(01:00:00):
acting pilot in command of the flight.
So I have also added an acting PIC column.
Have you gone back and?
Filled it all out forpre your previous career.
Yep, I
have.
It actually wasn't that hard.
Well, so what I did is, I went throughthe aircraft that are in my logbook.
(01:00:25):
And some aircraft, I know I wasnever the acting pilot in command.
And some, you always were.
friends who let me fly their planesand stuff like that, but they were
always with me and that sort of stuff.
there are some, aircraft for which I knewI was always the acting pilot in command.
And then there were, youknow, some aircraft where it
(01:00:47):
could have been either or, so.
I just automated the whole processand said, okay, we'll do a V look
up here and check the tail numberagainst the list here and just
check on whether that aircraft wasan always a never or a sometimes.
And,
um,
interesting.
And tell me how you've donethat in, in your four flight log
(01:01:09):
book, your electronic log book,
so ForeFlight lets you putin, um, custom columns.
Let me actually, uh, go to
ForeFlight
logbook here.
(01:01:37):
All right.
So under settings,
You can see here, all of these onesat the top with checkboxes are columns
that ForeFlight includes, and you candecide whether to display them or not.
So you can see, for example, I don'thave the night vision goggles checked,
(01:02:01):
because I have never flown with nightvision goggles, and probably won't.
Um, yeah, sounds likeit'd be kind of cool,
right?
that sounds pretty fun to
me.
Yeah, so you can see down at thebottom here, I have four custom fields.
and then there's this little newfield link, that you can click
(01:02:25):
and just create a new field.
Let's do that for the heck of it becauseI want to pull up the types you can do.
You can do text, numeric, hours,counter, date, date and time, or toggle.
So you can have just a Um, so thoseare the options for your, your custom
(01:02:50):
field types, but you can have, asfar as I know, they don't have a
limit on the number of custom fields.
but I would check on thatif you're going to do
A ton of
them, uh, because there may be a limit.
That would be hard to manage anyway.
So I would stay away from that if you can.
yeah, yeah.
And one of the things that I did noticeis when you have a custom field, you know,
(01:03:14):
in ForeFlight, they always put the button.
Once you fill in the total time, a lotof the other ones will have a little
button that appears that says, use 1.
5 or whatever you putin for the total time.
The custom fields don't get that.
So you do end up having tomanually key it every time.
Yeah.
I was thinking you could almostmake that column that when you were
just talking about a toggle field.
(01:03:35):
And if you ever had to, if you everhad to add up your total PIC where
you were acting PIC, you could justlook up the total duration of the
flights where that was toggled on.
yeah.
you could, you could
And let me show you how this looks too.
Build my experience reporthere those custom fields.
(01:03:56):
It does by aircraft type So this is forflight standard experience report And
when you have the custom fields if youcome down here to the bottom It shows
each type of flying that I have inYou know acting PIC part 135 and seat
(01:04:18):
hours are all done by aircraft type.
there is the totals at the bottom here.
Very cool.
but yeah, that's what that looks like.
Excellent.
Well, Kent, any other, um, last thingsyou wanted to say about this vast topic?
(01:04:41):
I think we have pretty wellbeat that one to death.
Um, like I said, there are a bunchof little tiny exceptions and
asterisks and stuff like that,that you can get into on this.
And so, you know, Please don'tautomatically go and start logging
everything as PIC just because you heardtwo random guys on a podcast tell you to.
(01:05:05):
Make sure that you can actually backthat up by reading the regulations
that we've pointed you to, readinginterpretations, and you know what?
If you have a question, by all meanssend it in and we'd love to answer it.
We, we like to do theresearch to call us crazy.
Yes, we are that kind of crazy andplease, FAA, don't take our medicals away.
(01:05:27):
Heh heh heh heh heh heh.
Excellent.
Well, Kent, this, thiswas an awesome topic.
Certainly needed.
I know that there's always alot of confusion about this.
And a lot of this discussion helpsme personally to wrap my head around
some of these scenarios that pop up.
When you get a lot more experience inyour career, things are going to pop up.
(01:05:50):
That you're thinking, Hmm,haven't seen this before.
And so these are the types ofthings, especially showing people
how to go find the regs to find theinterpretations and kind of make
their decisions based on those.
So appreciate this great topic,great coverage of the topic.
You never cease to amaze me onthe depth of, of knowledge that
(01:06:13):
you have on some of these things.
So thank you very much.
This was cool.
Yeah, this was fun.
It's always, uh, always funto geek out about this stuff.
All right, Kent.
So we'll see you next timeon, on beyond the check ride.
Thanks again.
Alright, we'll see ya.
(01:06:36):
Okay, everyone.
I hope you liked that topic as usual.
And like I said before, As usual.
And like I said before, we'dlove to get feedback, comments,
your own stories, all of it.
So reach out to us.
Logging is obviously a big topic.
We didn't even cover itnearly comprehensively.
And it took us over an hour.
(01:06:57):
There is a lot of nuance and a lotof detail, but hopefully we covered
the basics and the common scenariosthat people get tripped up on.
More importantly, Kent showed you howto figure it out for yourself, by diving
into the rags and the interpretations.
And so on.
So, I guess it's time to get out there.
And lug some more time.
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Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.