A mini software review for pilots.

At the end of 2010, nudged by the availability of a coupon code for 30% (I think) off, I purchased the Mac and iPad versions of LogTen Pro. This program, published by Coradine Aviation Systems, is designed primarily for airline pilots to log their flight time, trips, duty time, expenses, and other data. It can then generate any number of reports, including FAA-approved logbook pages and duty sheets. Of course, pilots with Macs don’t only live in the US, so LogTen Pro supports multiple countries and the reports needed to satisfy their own FAA-equivalent organizations.

Although, on the surface, LogTen Pro seems like overkill for logging pilot hours, its true power lies in the fact that you don’t need to log everything it lets you. For example, LogTen Pro enables you to log flight date, aircraft N-number, duty time in, hobbs out, time out, from airport, to airport, time in, hobbs in, and duty time out. That’s the kind of information an airline pilot might need or want to log. But, in reality, how many people really track that much information about their flights? LogTen Pro is perfectly satisfied just taking the flight date, N-number, from airport, to airport, and total time flown. And of course, you can log day vs. night time, VFR vs. IFR time, etc.

In other words, you can log as little or as much information as you like.

Of course, the iPad version (shown here with a screen shot of all my 2010 activity) syncs with the Mac version, so I can log time on the go and sync it all up when I get back to my office. Or I can pull old log entries out of my paper logbook and enter them in my Mac and then sync it all to my iPad.

While LogTen Pro is a bit weak on logging helicopter flight time — for example, it supports the Rotorcraft category but did not include a Helicopter class (although, for some reason, it did have gyroplane; go figure) — it is highly customizable. I simply used one of the undefined Class fields to create a Helicopter class in my copy of the software. Although this is calculated properly in the logbook reports as is, I can also create custom log book pages that eliminate columns I don’t need and expand on ones I’m interested in tracking, such as High DA/Mountain (another custom field I created) or Turbine helicopter.

I could go on for thousands of words about this software — there’s a lot to it. But it would be better to let you view the Guided Tour and just try the software for yourself. If you’re a pilot with a Mac, iPhone, or iPad, download the demo version of the software and see what you think. If you’re geeky and love stats like I do, I think you’ll be sold.