What can I log as XC time?

Bob wrote:

Newps wrote:


Don't make this more difficult than it has to be. It doesn't matter
where you live, where the plane is kept, where you get gas. If you take
off and then at some point during the flight land at a point that is
more than 50 miles away that is a cross country.


You're trying to make it simple, but then you say "if you
take off" and then say "at some point during the flight" but
you don't tell me what you think a "flight" is or a "take
off."

You're kidding right? A flight is anything you want it to be. And
you're not seriously asking what a takeoff might be are you Mr. Clinton?

Bob wrote in message . ..
1) I keep my plane in a hangar at an airport more than 50
nm from the airport nearest my home. I decide to fly it
home for a week (1 hr), and tie it down. I fly locally for
that week (5 hrs), then back to my hangar airport (1 hr).
How much of that can I log as XC time usable for a rating?

Bob
OK you fly it more than 50nm from A-B, then locally but you don't say
if you landed anywhere else. So, if you flew from A-B, then locally
and never touched down anyplace else, then flew B-A, you log 2 hours
of XC to meet the criteria of whatever rating you are alluding to.


2) I decide to take a long multi-day trip. Most days I fly
far more than 50 nm (25 hrs). Some days I fly "locally" to
see the sights and return to the same airport (10 hrs) that
is more than 50 nm from home. Some days I make only a
little progress and land less than 50 nm from the airport of
the previous day, but much farther than 50 nm from my hangar
airport (5hrs). How much of that can I log as XC time
usable for a rating?
Your hangar (base) airport doesn't mean anything in this question. For
regulatory purposes, and it is stated very specifically, from the
point of takeoff to the point of landing as the distance for XC for a
specific rating.
It would appear that you have done all of the required flights and XC
time for whatever rating you are after (assuming you are not trying to
ambush me with finer points of IFR or ATP or whatever). Are you trying
to finesse the FARS or are you an attorney looking for an out for an
errant pilot client?
After all, cross country can be 1km in a local charity fun run. How
does that apply to aviation? Check the definitions. Then it becomes a
matter of how deep are your pockets for the legal fees while they
argue it......

Newps wrote:

You're kidding right? A flight is anything you want it to be. And
you're not seriously asking what a takeoff might be are you Mr. Clinton?

I knew I'd get an answer like this when I wrote it. I was
emphasizing how difficult it is to figure out what a
regulation means and trying to pin you down.

The point of my question was to ask what *you* (and others
here) think it means and what you think the *FAA* thinks it
means. Telling me "A flight is anything you want it to be"
implies that I can log almost everything I've ever flown as
XC time during one long "flight." I don't think the FAA
would agree regardless of my personal opinion, and their
opinion has more weight than mine does. Even if I think it
was all one long flight, I don't think a DPE will. There
must be some guidelines on this, and that's what I was
trying to get to.

I'm
just wondering if my conception of what is a cross country
flight is correct.

There's no such concept as "correct" in this case. It would imply that there's only one way (or one set of ways) to look at any particular leg.

Somebody upthread mused that ones entire flight career could be considered one long cross country, and "surely the FAA didn't have this in mind". Well, to my knowledge it hasn't been tested in court, but (absent a clever use of careless and
reckless) it is not against the rules. It's also not unimaginably unreasonable either.

For me, if I take off for a place a
thousand miles away, every bit of the long trip is XC,
requiring navigation, pilotage, and all the skills. It does
not matter if I only fly 25 miles some days, and 300 miles
on other days or split it up as 150 miles the first day and
175 the second. It's all part of the same long XC.

If that's how you view it, then that's how you log it. You count the time.

You see, logging is an imperfect art, and hours in a logbook do not equate well to "experience gained". Imperfections (or imprecision) in whether a particular hour was cross country pale in comparison to the difference between flying 100 hours, and
flying the same hour 100 times, as it relates to how much "better" a pilot one is afterwards, and the point of a logbook (to the FAA) is to measure, in some way, pilot experience (and to infer quality, albeit imperfectly) for the purpose of flight
privelages (or rights, I won't get into that here

The same kind of issue comes up when logging "actual" (IFR) time. Just how soupy does it need to be? And what if you are "in and out"?

Here's one rule I use for IFR time: If I enter a cloud at any point in the flight, then the flight gets at least .1 actual in the logbook, even if I was only in for five seconds. It's my way of noting that I was in fact in cloud that flight. I try
to compensate by not logging .2 or more unless I'm clearly past .2, but it doesn't really matter because there are so many other vaguearies involved.

So, break your trip (what's a "trip"?) into as many or as few legs as you like, and log what feels right to you as XC or as local. If you do this, you'll have some reasoning behind whatever you log, and I think that's all the FAA is after.

(is it cross country if you land at the same airport, but a different runway? Suppose it's a really big airport?

Jose

Bob wrote in
:

Newps wrote:

You're kidding right? A flight is anything you want it to be. And
you're not seriously asking what a takeoff might be are you Mr.
Clinton?

I knew I'd get an answer like this when I wrote it. I was
emphasizing how difficult it is to figure out what a
regulation means and trying to pin you down.

The point of my question was to ask what *you* (and others
here) think it means and what you think the *FAA* thinks it
means. Telling me "A flight is anything you want it to be"
implies that I can log almost everything I've ever flown as
XC time during one long "flight." I don't think the FAA
would agree regardless of my personal opinion, and their
opinion has more weight than mine does. Even if I think it
was all one long flight, I don't think a DPE will. There
must be some guidelines on this, and that's what I was
trying to get to.





I personally would not log a flight, nor allow my student to log a
flight as xc, if we did not land at an airport farther than 50NM from
our home base without stopping at an intermediate point, ie., landing
every 25 miles does not count as xc, and flying a 50NM leg within a 25NM
radius of our home airport does not count as xc. I know this is not what
the regs say, but I hold myself and my students to a higher standard. I
also believe this was the intent of the regs, even though the exact
wording leaves room for interpretation.



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When Rutan did the around the world with no refueling I wonder if he logged
it as XC? Makes you wonder....

Gig Giacona wrote:
When Rutan did the around the world with no refueling I wonder if he logged
it as XC? Makes you wonder....


216.1 hour local flight. 1 landing, full stop. :-)

[Burt Rutan:] 216.1 hour local flight. 1 landing, full stop. :-)

Unless he's an ATP or military. Then it's XC.

Jose

"Gig Giacona" wrote in
:

When Rutan did the around the world with no refueling I wonder if he
logged it as XC? Makes you wonder....



Why would Rutan care about logging xc? Is he working towards a certificate
or rating?


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"Jose" wrote in message
om...
[Burt Rutan:] 216.1 hour local flight. 1 landing, full stop. :-)

Unless he's an ATP or military. Then it's XC.

Even ATPs need to land at a different airport other than the original point
of departure for it to count as a XC. You're getting confused by the lack
of a distance requirement for the required aeronautical experience to
*obtain* the ATP certificate.