Bowersbum

I've found a few threads for FTD's but I wanted to see what everyone else's views were on this. So, I used to teach at a 141 school that had a couple Frasca sims, no projector or anything, just instruments and avionics. When ever we would instruct in the sims our chief told us to fill in the students log book with "Dual Recieved" and "Sim or FTD" time, that was it. This made perfect sense to me, so that’s what I did. Now I’m working for another, larger, 141 school and they want the student’s logbooks filled out the same way as my previous school while also logging "Simulated Instrument" time during the FTD session. Now, I wasn't sure about this because my belief is that you can only "Simulate" instrument time in an aircraft. But when I looked into the FAR's a little I found this; "61.51(g) (4): A flight simulator or flight training device may be used by a person to log instrument time, provided an authorized instructor is present during the simulated flight."

So........What did you think? Should I start logging my students FTD sessions as simulated instrument?

de727ups

I'd only log ground trainer time in the "simulator/ground trainer" and "training time" columns. I've always assumed "simulated instrument" to be in flight.

Mitragorz

If I was doing instrument work in a sim, it got logged as simulated instrument.

Simulating instrument conditions is exactly what's being done, whether it be in a sim or an airplane.

de727ups

61.51 (g) says:

"(g) Logging instrument flight time. (1) A person may log instrument time only for that flight time when the person operates the aircraft solely by reference to instruments under actual or simulated instrument flight conditions."

It's hard to really comment without seeing the columns in the logbook. Given enough columns in the logbook, and not violating the above, I can agree with mitragorz. However, the word "aircraft" in the above reference rules out ground trainer/sim as the intent of the rule. The rule speaks to flying an "aircraft" (not a sim) in the clouds (acutal) or flying an "aircraft" (not a sim) under the hood (simulated).

Bowersbum

The word "aircraft" is listed in that reference because that is one scenario in which you can log instrument flight time. According to the FARs there are 4.

61.51(g) Logging instrument flight time.
(1) A person may log instrument time only for that flight time when the person operates the aircraft solely by reference to instruments under actual or simulated instrument flight conditions.

(2) An authorized instructor may log instrument time when conducting instrument flight instruction in actual instrument flight conditions.

(3) For the purposes of logging instrument time to meet the recent instrument experience requirements of §61.57(c) of this part, the following information must be recorded in the person's logbook—

(i) The location and type of each instrument approach accomplished; and

(ii) The name of the safety pilot, if required.

(4) A flight simulator or approved flight training device may be used by a person to log instrument time, provided an authorized instructor is present during the simulated flight.

de727ups

Okay, I see your point.

Let me ask you this. Would you put it in the far right total time column?

And I'll say that when one is interviewing for a job, and the guy asks how much "actual IFR time" do you have, that he's not speaking to your time in a ground trainer. So, how do you seperate out the two types of IFR time (actual and simulated) in your logbook? Or, does it really matter?

Here's an interesting issue. The Amflight mins say this:

75 hours instrument (at least 50 in flight)

One could make the argument based on 61.51g, that the word "flight" includes "ground trainer". (Congratz, you just convinced me of that). That said, I would't go to an Amflight interview and try to convince them that the "50 in flight" could be in a ground trainer. See where I'm going with this?

Bowersbum

I don't log Sim/FTD time as total, I hope no one does. Every log book that I've ever used or seen had a column for "Actual Instrument," "Simulated Instrument," and "Flight Simulator."

USMCFLYR

Since half of our semi-annual and annual mins can be done in the simulator then I certainly assumed that simulated instrument time could be logged from the sim; but like DE said - if I was asked in an interview about imstrument time then I would make it clear what was ACTUAL (inflight), SIMULATED (inflight) and SIMULATED (in a simulator).

USMCFLYR

Bowersbum

Side note: This thread is only about FTDs, not real simulators like the airlines use. I don't know too much about actual simulators.......yet.

flyandive

I've never logged any simulator time as total time, in fact I never logged most of my sim time at all, but I've had several people say you can log level D as flight time. Never seen any regs or exemptions to validate that. Does anybody know where this is found, because until then I am going to assume it is incorrect? That simulator time is sim time, period.