An employee of mine had a burglary the other day.
Even if nothing of high value is taken (let's face it, how many people have much really valuable stuff in their houses these days, with consumer goods being worth so little) the nuisance value of these things can be very high, because the scumbags quickly grab a load of stuff and then throw the stuff they can't use out of the car window.
Then there are repeated posting on flying forums about lost logbooks...
An aircraft with no records is potentially worth very little.
How many people backup their logbooks, and how?
I have been photographing mine. It's far quicker than scanning. The pics go on a network drive, and also on CD which is stored elsewhere.
How many people backup their logbooks, and how?
You mean the aircraft loogbook? At work, we use tech-logs that have two carbon-copies for each page. The original stays in the logbook with the aircraft, one copy goes to the maintenance shop and one to the operations department. At the flying school, they take a photocopy of each page when it's complete, but more for writing the invoices to the students and customers than for backup purposes.
For my personal logbooks, I have an Excel-worksheet into which I enter all the flights. I back-up that Excel sheet regularly on different storage media. If my paper logbook(s) get stolen or burnt, so be it. Nobody ever looked into any logbook of mine in 35 years of flying, so I could just give up maintaining one as well!
I meant all logbooks
The issue with electronic-only logbooks is how does one deal with signoffs e.g. the FAA BFR?
I am probably more anal than most!....I have scans of all my family's important personal documents (including my logbook and licences)...which are variously on DVD, computer hard drives, portable hard drives, memory sticks and cloud storage (two different sites)...in two locations: home and office....having moved many times around the world I became paranoid about losing such things in the process!
how does one deal with signoffs e.g. the FAA BFR?
Luckily there are no signoffs in JAR-FCL land. For training flights that may change with EASA, but for all other flights not.
Could I suggest that the average longevity of a physical paper record is probably longer than the equivalent electronic record. I have photos well over 100 years old that are perfectly discernible, how many people will be able to read an SD card in 100 years time?
Luckily there are no signoffs in JAR-FCL land
I thought the 2-yearly flight with an instructor, and the UK IMCR renewal, had to sign your logbook.
Could I suggest that the average longevity of a physical paper record is probably longer than the equivalent electronic record
That's why I fly with mostly paper. No backup required.
I thought the 2-yearly flight with an instructor, and the UK IMCR renewal, had to sign your logbook.
Here (Germany) the instructor/examiner signs on the backside of the licensce itself for typerating, classrating and IR renewals.
Yes of course you are right. I am being stupid!
But the FAA BFR goes in the logbook, because the FAA license/rating is just a plastic card.
OTOH the UK CAA license signatures are not recorded elsewhere either. The IR renewal is, I believe, but the PPL or IMCR are not.
I started using a commercial logbook application but found I could not reconcile all the different PIC, P1, Pu/t, P1s, Dual etc etc between the various countries for which I have licences: Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, UK, USA, Qatar, UAE....not to mention having switched from HH:mm to decimal hours many years ago....I could never get the hours and columns to add up.....so I gave up!
But maybe others have more success with these applications?
And to add to the post below, I also keep photocopies of all documents...
