Helicopter logbooks

Paperwork and aviation, my favorite topic! 😉

The company I used to work for had a whole library full of helicopter log books and that was only for a few helicopters they owned and a few more for helicopters they maintained. On top of the maintenance logs you have log cards for each critical component. A log card is kind of like a birth certificate for the component, when it was born, when it was installed, removed, overhauled, reinstalled … you get the point. And as you can imagine, there are many “critical” components on a helicopter.

My favorite part was when we overhauled and US certified aircraft that came in from Japan. Some of the logs were in Japanese, some in English, many in some strange language hybrid in-between. On top of that, getting the dates right was more complicated since some of the logs used a Japanese calendar. We had many people involved in this with mountains and mountains of paperwork. So, not only would the aircraft not take off, in some of them you couldn’t even physically put all of their paperwork inside of them and still close the doors.

This seems something that wasn’t mentioned to me when I first became fascinated with aviation. 😉

Oh, and in other news! We’re having a contest! Check it out HERE!

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5 comments on “Helicopter logbooks
  1. Fbs says:

    Regulations mandate that an aircraft is allowed to fly only when the paperwork filled outweights it…

  2. Randy says:

    Did Chuck just make sense?????

  3. Bomber says:

    It’s a little known law of physics that only applies to aviation…In order for an aircraft to take off the mass of the paperwork be equal to or greater than the mass of the aircraft.

    Just like in the submarine environment there is an equation for success…”success (resurfaces) = No. of dives + 1″ or in simple terms the number of resurfaces MUST be greater than the number of dives by 1….or else its a failed design lol

  4. FreeFlier says:

    Boeing says an aircraft cannot be delivered until the records out weigh the maximum gross take-off weight of the aircraft . . .

  5. Kopets says:

    I work at a helicopter factory and I confirm the big amount of paperwork needed to make a helicopter fly 🙂

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