Using Master Filters on the Analyzer page

[flhelicopterpilot]

Hello,

I'm getting confused on how the analyzer page works when using filters. When I try to figure out, say, PIC night time, I am getting different values depending on which filter I select, when the values should be the same.

When I select Master Filter as "PIC", and then look at the Night column total, I get 554.1.

However, when I select the Master Filter as "Night", and then look at the PIC column total, I get 700.

Both these values should be identical. The same thing happens across other filters as well, for example, selecting Night and looking at the total Cross Country column, yields a different result then when selecting Cross Country and looking at the Night column total.

Thank you.

 

[Andy Adams]

Hello,

This is due to the nature of how flights are typically logged with respect to night time and instrument time (usually).

The Analyzer master filter displays flights that have ANY amount of whatever type you choose. So if you select PIC it will show you all flights that have ANY amount of PIC logged.

This is very straightforward when referring to things like PIC, SEL, MEL, Cross country, turbine, etc. where the ENTIRE flight is logged as one of those things. (If you do a flight in a single engine plane, the entire duration of flight is SEL). Where this gets tricky is when you want to filter by something that ISN’T always the entire duration of flight. Such as night or instrument.

So what happens is you select night as your master filter. The analyzer includes all flights that have ANY amount of night logged. So if you do a 2.0 hour cross country flight and 0.5 is night, that flight gets included in the analyzer totals.

Let’s say you’ve done 3 flights, below:
2.0 cross country, 0.5 night
2.0 cross country, 0 night
2.0 cross country, 0.2 night

If you choose night as the master filter, the analyzer would include 2 of the 3 flights above. The duration column would say 4.0 , the cross country column would say 4.0, and the night column would say 0.7. So if you look at the cross country column, it shows 4.0 when you’ve only really done 0.7 cross country at night.

If you do the reverse, and use cross country as the master filter, all 3 flights are included. Duration is 6.0, cross country is 6.0, and night is 0.7. Looking at the night column then shows that you’ve done 0.7 cross country at night which is correct.

The same would occur if you are trying to filter by instrument time which is also a field that doesn’t typically encompass an entire flight.

The key thing here is you should use the master filter to select the larger category first. The one that is going to be the entire flight first.

So choose PIC master, then look at the night column total.
Choose cross country master, then look at the night column total.

Think of it this way... if someone showed you a Logbook entry like this:
Duration 2.0, SEL 2.0, Cross country 2.0, instrument 0.7, night 1.2
You know all of the night time was also cross country, but all of the cross country was not night. You know all of the instrument time was cross country, but not all of the cross country was instrument time. Was the instrument time at night?? There is no way to know for sure...

 

[flhelicopterpilot]

Hello,

Thank you for the reply. For the case of the 8710 report that is generated in Logbook Pro, how are those multiple hour combinations calculated (night PIC, XC PIC, etc.)?

I am a FAA Designated Pilot Examiner, and had an applicant show up for a checkride that had used the Logbook Pro master filter to calculate his flight hours for the aeronautical experience requirements. However, in adding up his paper logbook totals, we discovered that he was short certain hour requirements and therefore ineligible to take the practical test.

He had used the master filter to calculate his hours though, and not the 8710 report generator in Logbook Pro (it is missing several fields from the most current 8710-1 form on the FAA's website), but the 8710 report in the software does include some of the same fields (XC PIC, night PIC, etc.).

Can using that report lead to the same hour calculation errors, or is it more restrictive in finding the column and box totals?

 

[Andy Adams]

I’m pretty confident the 8710 report values are properly configured. I’ve never had any issue with it before. I will defer to a developer to confirm what’s behind the scenes in the code for sure.