Sport Pilot Talk

As long as the two other airports are separated by more than 25 nm, as long as you land at each one without landing in between at your home airport, the leg between those two airports is definitely a XC. (Of course, this means your CFI must have given you a solo XC endorsement for that particular leg.)

drseti wrote:As long as the two other airports are separated by more than 25 nm, as long as you land at each one without landing in between at your home airport, the leg between those two airports is definitely a XC. (Of course, this means your CFI must have given you a solo XC endorsement for that particular leg.)

Yes, that would be your departure point for that 25nm leg, ie cross-country. That seems a little like stretching the intent of the rule to me. On a good visibility day, you almost never get out of sight of your home airport.

drseti wrote:
But you shouldn't, since according to 61.1(b)(3)(iii)(A), it has to be more than 25 nm for a Sport Pilot student to log as XC.

That is not entirely correct. It must be more than 25NM to be used to fulfill the requirements of the rating, they can still log it as cross country.

For it to be cross country it simply needs to meet these 4 requirements.
(A) Conducted by a person who holds a pilot certificate;

(B) Conducted in an aircraft;

(C) That includes a landing at a point other than the point of departure; and

(D) That involves the use of dead reckoning, pilotage, electronic navigation aids, radio aids, or other navigation systems to navigate to the landing point.

The distance only comes into play when you are using it to meet the requirements for certain ratings. 25 NM for sport pilot, and 50 NM for Private, commercial, and instrument ratings. You can however use it for the 500 hours required for an ATP rating.

That's why I posted this earlier:

https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly ... ight-time/

TimTaylor wrote:

drseti wrote:As long as the two other airports are separated by more than 25 nm, as long as you land at each one without landing in between at your home airport, the leg between those two airports is definitely a XC. (Of course, this means your CFI must have given you a solo XC endorsement for that particular leg.)

Yes, that would be your departure point for that 25nm leg, ie cross-country. That seems a little like stretching the intent of the rule to me. On a good visibility day, you almost never get out of sight of your home airport.

And this would not count as cross-country toward the Sport Pilot requirements. The FAR says 25nm from the ORIGINAL point of departure, not a subsequent point of departure. You could log the entire flight as cross-country, but not count it toward your Sport Pilot rating other than total time.

drseti wrote: But you shouldn't, since according to 61.1(b)(3)(iii)(A), it has to be more than 25 nm for a Sport Pilot student to log as XC.

Well, it's a good thing I do my logbook in pencil. I'll go back and make the appropriate corrections. Thank you and I will watch the video you suggested.

You cannot do a logbook in pencil nor can you erase entries. It needs to be ink and you cross-over errors to make corrections.

Since you can log that as cross-country, just not toward your Sport Pilot certificate, I would just circle the hours that count toward your Sport Pilot certificate cross-country and just include those on your 8710.

Training time and aeronautical experience. Each person must document and record the following time in a manner acceptable to the Administrator:

So again, it looks like it depends but most likely if you are not doing any professional training and just want to do personal flying ... nobody will care.

Ps.
Looking at my logbook, all my entries are in ink - but then again, as soon as I got my ticket , I stopped using it and switched to the electronic version - still keep the original with endorsements etc but it is hidden away ...

Warmi wrote:Training time and aeronautical experience. Each person must document and record the following time in a manner acceptable to the Administrator:

So again, it looks like it depends but most likely if you are not doing any professional training and just want to do personal flying ... nobody will care.

The FAA will care and a court of law will care if you ever end up there due to an accident. Do it right. Pencil is not acceptable for legal documents which this is or may become.