Adding Special/Supernumerary Flight Time Fields (Relief Pilot, Cruise Pilot, etc.)
The bulk of pilot logbook formats are centered around pilots serving either as P1/PIC or P2/SIC/Copilot. However,
you may also find yourself in some other required or important position in the aircraft. For the purposes
of this discussion, we call these "supernumerary" fields.
These can include things like relief pilot time, cruise pilot time, examiner time, and more.
To set up a supernumerary field (we'll use "Relief Pilot" as an example):
- go to safelogweb.com ... setup ... Fields Setup ... Type of Piloting Time (Time Duration Fields)
- Scan the list of pre-built fields. If what you're looking for is there, click the "active" checkbox next to it. If it's not there, create the field by typing a title in for it ("Relief" or "Relief Pilot" in this case) and then selecting the "active" checkbox for it.
- Check (or not) the 'supernumerary' checkbox for the new field as appropriate. See the discussion about this below.
- Save the settings to lock in the new field
- (Optionally) Go to setup ... Reorder, Show, and Hide Logbook Fields to put the field where you want it. Save this as required.
And that's it! You're good to go.
What about that "supernumerary" checkbox? As you can see, we are using the generic settings options here for any flight time fields to create fields. Which is straightforward and simple, but there is one wrinkle. For certain logbook formats,
such as EASA and EASA-like ones, Safelog both created a series of supplementary totals tables and does a series of additional consistency checks. When you check the 'supernumerary' checkbox next to such a field, you are telling the system that the value of that field
contributes to total flight time.
For example, let's say you logged a flight as being 7 hours total of which you were PIC/P1 for 4 hours and relief pilot for the other 3. You SHOULD check the 'supernumerary' field for your "Relief" pilot here as this will tell Safelog to include the relief field time when trying to make sure that your total flight time is consistent - in this case, 4 + 3 = 7. You should NOT check the "supernumerary" field for optional flight time fields where what you are doing "overlaps" with something else. For example, you should NOT check
the supernumerary fields for fields such as cross country, night, IMC, etc. You should also not check it for any "examiner" or "instructor" field if you fly under a regime where you also simultaneously log such time as P1 or P2. You will also generally not
want to check this box for things like DH (Deadhead) time or Ground School as you don't want such things to add up to your total flight time in most cases.
How do you know if you got this right? Basically, the "totals mismatch" system will not complain if you have it right. If the totals mismatcher is complaining at you, dig into it as it's "Why" feature can show you specifically what it's not happy with.
In the case of some logbook types, such as FAA, the supernumerary field might not always play a visible role, but it's better to get things right.
Recommended Field Name for certain supernumerary fields
To maximize future compatibility, We recommend that you use the following text exactly for relevant field names. Each bullet point item below lists a 'type' of supernumerary field and one or more acceptable variations as to how we recommend naming them.
- Relief
- Cruise
- Examiner
- Instructor
- Check Airman
- Check
You can also add the following PREFIXES as appropriate:
- DAY or NIGHT (for example "DAY Relief Time" - though in practice we don't think many of you will want to divide relief time into DAY or NIGHT)
- AS (for example "AS Examiner" - "As" does nothing - it's just aesthetic and generally we recommend you don't include it).
You can also add the following SUFFIXES if you like:
- "Time" and "Pilot". These do nothing - they are purely aesthetic (for example "Relief Pilot")
- P1, P2, SIC, PIC, INST, EXAM, PF, PNF, PM
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