Logging actual instrument time?

[midlifeflyer]

Answers my question. I now have 476.4 actual instrument hours instead of the 82.3 that I used to have.

Do you =really= have almost 500 hour of flight time in VMC during which you were unable to keep the airplane upright without your instruments?

Having been over water and in sparse unlit areas at night, I've never really had that problem.

 

[siucavflight]

Do you =really= have almost 500 hour of flight time in VMC during which you were unable to keep the airplane upright without your instruments?

Having been over water and in sparse unlit areas at night, I've never really had that problem.

I am not going to log it. I am going to keep logging my actual time as time when I was in weather less than VMC. I was being sarcastic.

I know many chief pilots at many different corporations, and if anyone walked in there and told them that they were logging instrument time when flying at night time in VMC they would laugh at them.

 

[labbats]

If you don't know up from down without your instruments, it's loggable. Otherwise, leave it alone. I've flown with too many old students with hundreds of hours IMC logged that were a handful in the soup, due to their version of "no-ground = no-VFR". VFR on top is not IMC.

 

[pilotmyf]

Yeah! Better makes sure that the chief pilot at you next job agrees with the FAA!

If not, you never know where else the operation disagrees with the FAA. Maybe maintenance? Maybe rule of flight? Maybe the weather conditions that are permissible. Maybe...

You're missing the point, if you want to be a cfi until you lose your medical, log all time as actual, nobody will care, you can tell all the hangar flyers about your thousands of hours of actual and watch their awe toward you. My guess is you have students that want 135/121 jobs. Don't screw them by telling them to log that questionable actual. Who cares what local FSDOs say about, they all have different opinions on many issues, and your student might be getting a job in a different FSDO area. Plus, Their prospective employers will laugh at them, and the excuse "MY instructor told me it was alright" will no doubt get a good belly laugh.

So here's the skinny, what is legal and acceptable is different (just like what is legal and what is safe). Legal to the FAA might not be acceptable to HR and the chief pilot. AND THEY HIRE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, not the FAA!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[midlifeflyer]

Who cares what local FSDOs say about, they all have different opinions on many issues, and your student might be getting a job in a different FSDO area.

You're missing one small point. I wouldn't believe anything that a local FSDO told me on any regulatory issue. This isn't a FSDO interpretation.

It's an interpretation by the people who have the ultimate final word about what the FAR mean.

Besides, the rule doesn't permit pilots to log all or even most night flights as IFR. If a pilot with 3000 hours in his logbook came to me and said he had logged 400 hours actual in VMC, I probably wouldn't hire him. Without some real good explanation about the conditions that made him unable to keep the airplane upright in VMC so often, I'd think he was either lying or a =very= bad pilot.

Your HR issue is a legitimate one. But logging is an FAA data issue. Showing an employer that you have real experience is a presentation issue.