Overview

freePilotLog.com is a free online logbook for pilots that perfectly complements your paper logbook:

• Benefit from powerful features such as automatic currency notifications and advanced reporting and printing functions.
• Have a complete backup of you paper logbook. Be sure your data is safe: Frequent backups are included!
• Upload GPS tracks and thereby automatically fill in your logbook! Archive tracks, export them to KML or GPX format, and view flights in google earth.
• No need to install any software or synchronize multiple computers and devices. Access your logbook from any computer with Internet access, anytime.
• Get new features, improvements, and bug fixes automatically.

And why is freePilotLog.com different?

• freePilotLog.com makes use of the latest web technologies to deliver a fully featured online application with fast response times, an elegant user interface, and the convenience of an online service that is available anywhere and anytime.
• freePilotLog.com integrates tightly with the online flight planning web site flyagogo.net. It allows you to easily get current information about airports, graphically displays flight plans and much more!
• Easily import and export data from other logbook software. No risk for you: If you find any better logbook software we will let you go!
• And best of all: it's free!

We are listening to you. Let us know if you are missing a feature!

Supported features

• Supported fields: From, To, Fight plan, Date, Total time, Aircraft type, Tail number, Total number of landings, Night time landings, Number of precision and non-precision approaches, Actual and simulated instrument time, Dual received time, Dual given time, Pilot in command time, Ground instruction time, Simulator time, Cross-country time and distance, Multi-engine, Sea plane, High performance, Tail wheel, Complex, and Remarks.
• Manage custom labels to keep track of your flying the way you want it: For example "flying with my dog", "training flight", "with guests", and so on.
• Advanced user interface with fast entering of flight data, minimizing the number of clicks and key strokes necessary: Default values are provided where possible, drop down lists present lists of possible values, fields are displayed only when necessary.
• Automatic monitoring of night and instrument currency.
• See when the next biennial flight review is required and the medical needs to be renewed. Receive automatic notifications.
• Filter and browse logbook entries by type of logged hours (day, night, cross country, actual or simulated instrument, pilot in command, dual), labels (multi-engine, tail wheel, sea plane, high performance, complex, simulator), aircraft type, flight date, custom labels, or a combination of the above. Easily keep track of your training progress towards a license or rating.
• Keep a record of all your certificates and ratings and other personal information.
• Easily import data from other logbook software or spreadsheet applications. We currently support the csv format (comma separated value), but more formats may be added as necessary.
• Export data from the logbook to csv text files. No vendor lock in: We do not force you to use our service if you change your mind.
• Download your logbook as a nicely formatted PDF file for viewing and printing. Sometimes a piece of paper beats the best online service.
• Upload GPS tracks to your logbook. Uploading a track will automatically fill in your logbook entry as much as possible, including the flight path (airport identifiers), duration of flight, number of landings, and date.
• Archiving of GPS tracks. Export as KML or GPX format. View flights tracks in google earth.

Setting up your account

After signing up with freePilotLog.com please take a few minutes time to set up your account. To do this please click on the Settings link at the top of the main page. The settings page is organized in three tabs:

General Settings

The nickname is displayed at the top of the web page when you are logged in. It can be your name or any nickname you want to use.

The home airport identifier is used as the default value for the FROM location when a new flight is entered as it is the most likely starting point for any flight.

On this page you can optionally provide your name and mailing address. The information you provide is shown on the cover page of the printed logbook. It is not used for any other purpose. You will never receive any mail from us or anyone else.

Finally please make sure that the newsletter option is checked. The newsletter is our only way to communicate with you and let you know about new and improved features. We will not send any spam, promised!

Notifications

Please specify your date of birth, and the dates when you received your last medical, the medical class, and the date of the last biennial flight review. If you did not have a biennial flight review this will be the date when you received your private pilot license.

This information is needed in order for us to be able to notify you when the next medical and biennial flight review will become necessary. This information will be displayed in the notifications box on the left side of the screen.

Certificates

On this page you can keep track of all your certificates, including the date they were issued and the certificate number. Please make sure to specify at least the date of your private pilot license. This enables you to only display flights that happened after you had obtained the private pilot license (see "Browsing your logbook"). This is particular useful to track your training progress towards the next rating.

Entering flights

Click on "Add a new flight" on the main screen or select an existing flight by clicking on it and the following input mask will appear:

The procedure is pretty self-explanatory, but let us point out a few things that are useful to know and that will help you to enter flights into your logbook even faster:

	First, enter the date of the flight. By default the current date is chosen for you. If you are entering a bunch of old flights from your paper logbook you may prefer to set the date of the latest flight in your logbook: Simply click on the "latest" button. You can also choose a date from the calender, by clicking on the day and using the symbols at the top of the calendar to select the month and year.
	Second, type the flight plan. The flight plan (or route) is a list of airport identifiers (or navaid or airspace fix identifiers), separated either by a space or a dash - both works fine. While you are typing airport identifiers, a pop up with the name of possible airports that match your letters will appear. You can select one by clicking on it. Finally if you have entered a valid flight plan, click on "show map". This will display the flight plan overlaid to a sectional chart together with an elevation profile provided by our partner website flyagogo.net.
	Now enter the remaining data of your flight. Important to know: By default not all fields are displayed! Let's say for example that "dual" time was received. In that case you'll click on "dual". Two more fields will appear: "dual received" and "pilot in command", as can be seen in the image at the top.
	One more thing: One can assign labels to each flight. Let's say for example that the flight was in a multi engine aircraft. In that case click the corresponding check box, see the image at the top. It is even possible to define custom labels, more on this in the next chapter "Browsing your logbook"!
	If you are done, press the "Save" button. That's it. If you are editing many flights in a row, note that one can move from one flight to another by clicking on the "older" and "newer" links at the top of the input mask. This will automatically safe any changes and go to the next or previous flight without returning to the main screen.

We recommend that all flights from your paper logbook are entered in this way. Almost everyone who has done this has discovered errors in the paper log book! However if you decide that this is too much work and you want to enter only new flights, or only a subset of recent flights, here is a trick how to get the accounting right anyway: Enter "placeholders" for previous flights just like entering a normal flight. For example if you total logged time is 200 hours so far, simply enter one single flight with a total time of 200 hours. You get the idea!

Importing and exporting

It is possible to import and export data from and to the logbook. Simply click on the "import" and "export" links on the main page. We provide the import function to allow you to import existing data from other applications, like logbook software that you may have used previously, or data that you may have entered into an excel spread sheet prior to using freePilotLog.com.

The export function allows you to use your data for other purposes, for example to do statistical analysis with it, create diagrams and reports with it, or whatever else you may wish to do. Also, should you ever decide to use another logbook software, you will be able to export your data easily, i.e. there is no vendor lock in.

Importing data in three easy steps

Assuming that a csv text file has been exported from your previous logbook or Excel application here are the three steps involved in the import process:

Uploading the csv file: Click on the "import" link at the top of the logbook. Now click on the "browse" button and select the csv file from your hard disk. Congratulations you have located your text file on your hard drive?! The hardest part has been accomplished already! Now click on the "upload" button to transfer the file to freepilotlog.com. Please be patient and wait until the file has been uploaded successfully. If anything goes wrong a stunning error message will appear.

Assigning the columns: You should now see a numbered list of fields (columns) as they are contained in your text file. Each field will show a combo box with the possible meanings for that field. Go through the list carefully and assign the meaning of each field to your best knowledge (you should know what is in your file since you created it, right?!). For example if you see a date, make sure that the "date of flight" has been selected for this field. Correct each field if necessary. If you have included the field names as the first line of your text file (see the Hint below) the columns should already have been assigned correctly for you. If you are sure that all columns are assigned correctly press the "Import now" button!

Hope for the best: Actually there is no third step if anything works as expected. Of course we all know that this is not always the case. There are a couple of things that can go wrong when importing data from csv files. We wished there were a well defined and widely accepted format for logbooks which would make life a lot easier for everyone, but for now we have to cope with what we have: csv text files. Please review your imported logbook carefully to make sure that all fields and flights have been imported properly. Let us know if you encounter an error that you cannot resolve on your own. We may be able to help or at least say a few encouraging words. Write to info@freepilotlog.com.

Detailed description of the file format

Each row in the text file represents one log book entry. Each row contains a comma separated list of values for each field of a log book entry. The following table lists the available fields:

Field	Description
date	date of the flight
from	3 or 4 letter airport identifier of the origin
to	3 or 4 letter airport identifier of the destination
route	a flight plan consisting of airport identifiers separated by a space or a hyphen. The "from" and "to" fields are not required if the "route" field is present.
aircraft	aircraft type/model
tailnumber	aircraft tail number
remarks	free text
singleengine	single engine (logged time in hrs)
multiengine	multi engine (logged time in hrs)
xcountry	cross county (logged time in hrs)
xcountrydistance	distance of the cross country flight in nm
day	day (logged time in hrs)
night	night (logged time in hrs)
actualInstrument	actual instrument (logged time in hrs)
simInstrument	simulated instrument (logged time in hrs)
ground	ground instruction (logged time in hrs)
dualreceived	dual received (logged time in hrs)
PIC	pilot in command (logged time in hrs)
total	total flight time logged (required)
landingsday	number of day time landings
landingsnight	number of night time landings
precisionapproaches	number of precision approaches
nonprecisionapproaches	number of non-preciscion approaches
simulator	simulator (logged time in hrs)
seaplane	seaplane (logged time in hrs)
highperformance	high performance (logged time in hrs)
tailwheel	tail wheel (logged time in hrs)
complex	complex aircraft (logged time in hrs)

Your text file does not need to contain all of these values, though it is encouraged to include as many fields as possible in order to minimize the loss of information during the import process. The required fields are:

• the "date"
• either the "from" and "to" fields, or the "route" field.
• the "total" time logged

Hint: The order of the values contained in each row - and therefore the meaning of each value - will be defined manually by you in step two of the import process (see above). However there is a trick which makes this a lot easier: Optionally you may include a special row in your csv text file which contains the names of each fields. This row must be the first row in the text file. If you choose the field names exactly like they are given in the above table the columns will be pre-assigned automatically for you.

One more thing for those who want to join the guild of advanced data import wizards, i.e. those who rather create the csv text file manually than using Excel. Fields that contain textual contents like the route, from, to, date, or remark fields should be enclosed in quotation marks. The "remarks" field is somewhat special since it may contain several lines of text. In that case a log book entry may span several rows in the csv text file. As you can see quotation marks have a special meaning as they enclose field values. If a remark actually contains a real quotation mark this needs to be converted into a double quotation mark to avoid any confusion. Similarly if a real comma is contained in the remarks field it needs to be converted into a double comma. If you do not understand what we are talking about - try to ignore it for know. It will come back to haunt you later!

Browsing your logbook

Below is an image of how your logbook will look like on the main page. The items are listed with the latest flight on the top. The first twenty or so flights are displayed on one page. To see older flights click on the older link on the top right:

Note that moving the mouse pointer over each row will display a pop up with additional information on the flight. In the above image the mouse is placed over the route "KPAO-KTCY-KMOD" and the pop up displays the airport names corresponding to these identifiers.

Filtering

It is possible to list only flights that fulfill certain criteria, i.e. to filter the log book. This comes in handy for example to find out how much time has been logged in a certain period, or with a certain aircraft. But that's not all: Filtering is possible either by the type of logged hours, by labels attached to each flight, by currency, by aircraft type, or a combination of these.

The picture on the left shows the Filter by label box. One can expand or collapse each box by clicking on the arrow symbol in the box header. Simply click on the corresponding check boxes to select only flights with a certain label.

Custom labels

It is even possible to define your own custom labels besides the ones that are already defined for you. Let's say for example that you want to log time with passengers aboard separately, or quality flying time with your dog as copilot. No problem! Click on "edit labels" (see picture above). A screen appears that will allow you to define, rename, and delete custom labels as you wish.

Using a GPS device with your logbook

freepilotlog.com supports uploading of a GPS track with each logbook entry. Uploading a GPS track has many benefits:

• Uploading a track automatically fills in the logbook entry as much as possible. For example the flight path (airport identifiers), date, flight duration, and number of landings are filled in automatically. No need to type any more!
• Once a track is uploaded it is archived with the logbook entry. It can then simply be exported in KML or GPX format by clicking on the KML or GPX icons.
• Click on the KML icon to see and explore your flight in google earth.
• Export tracks in standard GPX format to view and edit your flight with pretty much any other geographic (GIS) application.
• Use the tracks to review and analyze flights and flight lessons. Check how well your pattern was flown, or how smooth your approaches worked out, or what airports you actually landed at!

To use this new feature you will need to record your flight using a GPS device. We recommend hand held devices (for example the Garmin 60Csx or any other of Garmin's aviation units are excellent for this purpose.), but any device that is capable of recording tracks and exporting them to standard GPX file format will do.

Save your track in the standard GPX format. For garmin devices you may want to use the MapSource software to do this. Now go to your logbook at www.freepilotlog.com and click on "Add new flight". In stead of entering the flight data manually click on "upload track" and follow the instructions. It is also possible to upload tracks for flights that are already in the logbook. Make sure to remove the checkmark next to "automatically enter flight data" in the last step of the import process if you do not want to change existing entries.

Contact

Please send your questions, comments, or support requests to info@freepilotlog.com. We are looking forward to hear from you!