I started flying hang gliders in 1985, paragliders in 1992. Virtually every flight I've ever done is logged, the early days in those little red flight log books from USHGA, later in a notebook on pre-printed accounting sheets, then on printed forms I laid out in a word processor. When I started test flying for Wills Wing I logged notes in little notepads that I would then transcribe to my forms. Back in the mid-90's I had several years running of 100-150 hours airtime. That dropped off a bit as domestic-bliss-related things took over, including long summer vacations. The bliss stopped in early 2004, so annual airtime picked up again. Market started dropping-off in 2008. WW ceased operations 2021.
Around 1998 I switched from paper logs to an Excel spreadsheet, which is why the details logged change. I've imported many flights from Wills Wing's records, and filled-in info from my logs.
In 2001 I got a Handspring Visor PDA and set up a memo format for logging test flights with that, for later copy-and-paste transcription. Eventually I transferred my Excel spreadsheet to a database, with awk and bash scripts that would read the PDA and update the database. In 2005 I got a Garmin Geko GPS, adding another layer to my flight logging.
Later I got GPS flight instruments which provide track logs and flight details. The advent of GoPro cameras added another layer.
Jan 2025 - transcription of early handwritten flight logs complete! Almost 2 month's work. I had no flights in 1989 and 2023.
Since my flying used to be split between test-fly days, where I would do 3-6 flights of anywhere from 5-25 minutes, and fun flying where I'd fly once for 1-2 hours, overall averages can be rather meaningless.
I need to add keys for my abbreviations of sites and models flown. The models listed as 'Falcon KLH' are the one of the two Falcon 225's I've owned and use for fun flights and tandems.
Photos are of whatever I saw that day; may show the glider flown in the log, may show other gliders or a track log.