As I’ve been reading more and more in the forums, I’ve learned that not all logged hours are created equal. This makes it is hard for readers to understand the equivalency across builders. Are the hours logged at the moment you arrive at the hangar? What about when you go to the hardware store? Is it only hours you are actually holding a tool working on the plane? Believe it or not, these are all styles of logging that I’ve seen in the forums.

In my opinion there is no right way to log hours (there’s definitely no regulations around it), and each builder can decide to do it their own way, but it results in widely distributed “hours to completion” numbers that may confuse us beginners. Hence this post…to declare the way I’m logging hours.

And in a nutshell, it’s very loose.

I don’t clock in and clock out, and sometimes I will go multiple days on a project before “tallying” the hours. Generally it’s a rough guess of the time I arrive at the hangar (or if at home when I start focused time on a task) to when I leave. I don’t include any hours doing research or reading the plans (unless at the hangar). I do try to estimate any downtime at the hangar when not working. For example, breaks for food, an exciting baseball game on the tv that requires my full attention, hanging out with friends, and hangar flying. I am also tracking “crew” hours in a similar fashion and count the hours equivalent to mine. If I were to guess, I’m probably overestimate the hours slightly, and will end up with high build hours logged by the end of the project.

Hopefully this helps folks understand my style of logging, and give a bit of clarity around the hours you see on my hobbs meter.

Happy Building!