LogTen Express 2.5.2

Developer: Coradine

Price: $39

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3

Trial: 10-flight-limited fully functional demo

LogTen Pro 2.5.2

Developer: Coradine

Price: $89

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3

Trial: 10-flight-limited fully functional demo

The unfortunate realities of business effectively force people in several fields to use Windows machines for work. Coradine has done its best to make sure that aviation isn’t one of them any more. Its LogTen Express and LogTen Pro applications for Mac OS X are an essential part of any pilot’s flight bag.

LogTen used to be one single piece of software, but as of version 2.0 it was split into Express and Pro versions. The Express version is targeted at pilots for whom aviation is primarily a hobby, or those just getting started in the field, and its feature set and pricing reflect this. The Pro version, as its name implies, is more for the instructor, military, or professional pilot who needs more detailed logging and sophisticated division of flight time. For a full comparison and feature breakdown, see the LogTen section of Coradine’s Web site.

Because there’s no way for a Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) to electronically “sign” a logbook using LogTen, I can’t recommend either version as the sole logbook for any pilot in training, but the sophisticated search and reporting features make filling out 8710 forms far simpler.

In LogTen Pro, nearly every possible category of flight time is accounted for, though, inexplicably, a column for solo flight time is entirely absent. (The developer, who has been very responsive to comments and suggestions, is planning to deal with this in a future version.) LogTen Express similarly lacks a solo column, and dispenses with the more unusual types of piloting time, like shipboard landings, night-vision goggle time, auto-lands, and flight engineer time.

In both versions, the various columns can easily be turned on or off, so pilots who fly primarily VFR (Visual Flight Rules) and/or during the day can quickly condense the display to show only the time they’re interested in. Both versions are screen-hungry, so those of you on screens smaller than 14" may find yourselves pressed for width. Fortunately, the latest versions have dispensed with the minimum-width restriction on several columns, making it easier to tailor the display to your needs.

With the splitting of the LogTen line into two distinct applications comes a welcome price break for students and flight instructors. A $10 discount is now available for students and CFIs purchasing LogTen Express, and the upgrade to LogTen Pro is only $49, making a student/CFI version of LogTen Pro $11 cheaper ($78) than the non-discounted version ($89). Pricing is on par with comparable Windows software, which is to say, like most things in the aviation world, it seems at least slightly overpriced. The added features of LogTen Pro won’t be worth the extra $50 for most people, though professional pilots with a regular paycheck probably won’t think twice about it.

The 2.5 versions of LogTen Pro and LogTen Express bring tremendous improvements over prior versions, particularly in the user filters. To put it diplomatically, the user-defined filters in previous versions were a bit lacking in their implementation. This problem has been fixed in spades, and the new filtering is on par with that used by iTunes for Smart Playlists, which is to say it’s brilliant.

Several other minor bugs have been quashed in the upgrade from 2.0.x to 2.5.2, all of which detracted significantly from the usability of previous versions. Though previous versions were not particularly unstable, the number of unexplained crashes seems to have gone down substantially as well.

One of the wonderful things about LogTen is its leveraging of Mac OS X technologies like WebKit, which is used for report rendering. The templates used for the reports are simple HTML files that the user can edit at will. They’re easy for anyone with a knowledge of HTML to decipher, and writing custom templates is thoroughly explained in the Help, which is also excellent. On a personal note, I’m pleased to say that the 2.5 versions of LogTen are shipping with a much-improved FAA 8710 report template written by yours truly.

If you’ve been looking for a better electronic logbook solution than a custom Excel spreadsheet, look no further. From a zero-hour student pilot to a high-time military, corporate, or airline pilot, there’s a LogTen version that will suit your needs and make keeping track of your flight time far simpler.

Copyright © 2004 Chris Lawson, clawson@atpm.com. Reviewing in ATPM is open to anyone. If you’re interested, write to us at reviews@atpm.com.