Pilot Logbook

The Pilot Logbook at https://rotorlab.app/logbook is your flight record. Every flight is a single row: aircraft, location, duration, and purpose, whether you type it in, pre-fill it from a flight log, or let a connected ground station file it automatically. Your total hours, recency, and currency are all calculated directly from these records, never from a counter somebody keeps up to date.

The page has tabs: Logbook, Currency, My details, Checklists, and (for organization admins) Team.

Recording a flight#

Press Log a flight and fill in the form:

Aircraft: pick a registered aircraft from your fleet, or choose the first option for an airframe that is not in the fleet and type Its name (a tail number or description). Flights on a registered aircraft build that airframe's hours and health history; flights on a typed name count toward your own hours but accumulate nothing for the airframe until it is registered.
Date and a time of the flight.
Flight time in minutes.
What for: the operation type. The built-in types are commercial, training, proficiency, maintenance, survey, inspection, public safety, test, and recreational.
Site: where you flew.
Job: file the flight against a job from Clients and Jobs. Only open and quoted jobs are offered for new flights.
Sorties and Landings.
Night: tick if flown at night. Night flights are counted separately and feed night currency rules.
Conditions: free text, for example "VLOS, 12 kt, clear".
Observed weather: read-only. A filed flight can carry the aviation weather observed at the time (wind, gusts, visibility, ceiling, temperature, dewpoint, altimeter, and the reporting station). What you typed in Conditions and what the weather service reported are two different facts; they sit side by side and never overwrite each other.
Airspace authorization, Issued by, and Authorized ceiling (ft AGL): record a LAANC confirmation you already hold, and who issued it. Optional, and never required to file. RotorLab does not issue authorizations; it records what you held so the flight record shows it.
Crew: visual observer, payload operator, and so on.
Remarks: free text up to 2000 characters.

Press Save. Editing an existing flight opens the same form with a Delete button; deleting a flight also deletes any log file stored with it.

Organizations that hold Public Safety Operations see an additional optional block on the form: Call type, Requested by, Outcome, Location (latitude and longitude), Imagery retained, and Public reporting (include normally, hold, or out of scope), with a one-line Why when a disposition is set. Only a rounded area around the location is ever publishable, and the exact position is kept for a limited number of days shown on the form.

Pre-filling from a flight log#

Press Log one from a flight log and drop a .bin, .tlog, or .ulg file onto the form. The date, flight time (armed time), and vehicle type are read from the file and filled in for you; check the details and save. In this flow the file itself is not kept.

Flights filed by a ground station#

Connected ground stations file flights automatically. The Source column shows where each record came from: manual for entries typed here, gc for ground-station filings, log for records created from a log.

Log files stored with flights#

When a ground station files a flight it can attach the flight log itself, and RotorLab keeps the file with the flight record. Three rules keep stored logs honest:

Storing is never the paid part. Attaching a log costs nothing and meters nothing. Analysis is the product; possession of your own file is not.
Download and delete always work. You can pull every byte back out, and erase any log, with no add-on at all.
Retention is yours to choose. Logs are kept for a window your organization sets (90 days by default), then swept automatically.

Stored logs are listed, downloaded, and deleted per aircraft on the Fleet Health page, which is also where the retention window is set.

Totals#

Cards at the top of the Logbook tab show: Flights logged (broken down by source), Hours on record, Career total (observed hours plus the prior hours from your details), Last 30 days, Last 90 days, and Night flights with total landings. Everything is recomputed from the flight rows, so a corrected or deleted flight moves the numbers with it.

Filtering and export#

The filter card narrows the table by From and To dates, Aircraft, Type, and Night only, with This quarter and This year shortcuts and a Clear button. A summary line states how many flights match, their hours, landings, and night count. A flight with no date is excluded by any dated filter rather than silently counted at one end.

Download PDF produces a logbook document from exactly the filter you are looking at. The server re-reads the flights itself, so the document is built from the record, not from what the page held.

Currency#

The Currency tab shows your overall standing and one card per item, each colored current, due soon, lapsed, or unknown:

Remote pilot certificate and Medical, tracked from the expiry dates in your details.
Recurrent training, tracked on a cycle (24 months by default) from the completion date in your details.
One card per recency rule your organization defines, each stated as N qualifying flights within the last D days and evaluated against your flight records. Each card names the flights it was drawn from.

A date nobody has entered shows as unknown rather than counting for or against you.

My details#

The My details tab holds your certificate (Certificate no., Type, Issued, Expires, Recurrent done, Medical expires) and your own details (Ratings, Phone, Prior hours, Notes). Prior hours are hours flown before this logbook; they are reported alongside your observed hours and never folded into them. Press Save my details.

Checklists#

The Checklists tab lists your organization's cards. Press Complete on a card, answer each item (pass, fail, or not checked), optionally attach it Against flight, add Notes, and press File this checklist.

Filed checklists appear in a table below (completed time, checklist, what it was filed against, pass, fail, and unchecked counts, and source) and as a pill next to the flight in the logbook table. A filed checklist stores each item as worded at the time of completion: editing the template later does not alter records already signed off.

Organization admins also write the cards here: New checklist opens an editor with a name, when it is used (before the flight, after the flight, maintenance, after an incident, or other), an in-use toggle, and an ordered list of steps you can drag to reorder or paste in bulk. Two standard cards (a pre-flight and a post-flight) are provided as starting points. See Checklists for the full workflow.

Team (organization admins)#

The Team tab lists every pilot with their standing, flights, hours, last flight, and what needs attention, sorted so whoever needs attention is first. Open a pilot's row to review their logbook; a banner reminds you that anything you save there is recorded against them, not you.

Below the pilot list are the organization's Currency rules. Add or edit a rule with a key, a display label, Flights needed, Within days, an optional restriction to one operation type, a Night only toggle, an in-use toggle, and a note saying why the rule exists. Disabled rules are not applied to any pilot.