scan aircraft log to CD

[Dave Butler]

I'm sure some of you here have scanned your logs into a machine readable format.
Please let me take advantage of what you've learned.

Do you store the scanned pages as .jpg, or .pdf, or something else?

Each page a separate file?

Any special software?

Did you build an index? If so, how?

Will all the pages of a typical spamcan log fit on a single CD?

Any other hints?

Thanks.

[Ben Smith]

We do ours as .JPG, and have a seperate file for each page, yellow tag,
etc.. Nothing fancy. Each image is about 500k. But that could be reduced
by lowering the resolution.. With 4.7gb DVD writable disks out there, we
don't really worry about the space issue.


"Dave Butler" > wrote in message
news:1107462180.541837@sj-nntpcache-5...
> I'm sure some of you here have scanned your logs into a machine readable
format.
> Please let me take advantage of what you've learned.
>
> Do you store the scanned pages as .jpg, or .pdf, or something else?
>
> Each page a separate file?
>
> Any special software?
>
> Did you build an index? If so, how?
>
> Will all the pages of a typical spamcan log fit on a single CD?
>
> Any other hints?
>
> Thanks.

[Ben Jackson]

On 2005-02-03, Dave Butler > wrote:
>
> Do you store the scanned pages as .jpg, or .pdf, or something else?

I used my digital camera to photograph the pages a few at a time.
It's much faster than scanning and still perfectly legible if you
have the camera (and lighting) set up right. Try to get the camera
square to the table and work in front of a big north-facing window
to get even light.

Put them on something plain (not a woodgrain table or a carpet) since
the fuzzy borders will just bulk up your jpgs.

> Each page a separate file?

Mine are 2 pages per file, but the two pages are different logbooks
(one above another). I didn't bother with any indexing because it's
just for emergency backup purposes.

> Will all the pages of a typical spamcan log fit on a single CD?

Oh yeah.

--
Ben Jackson
>
http://www.ben.com/

[Steve C]

> On 2005-02-03, Dave Butler > wrote:
> >
> > Do you store the scanned pages as .jpg, or .pdf, or something else?

I just did mine. Flatbed scanner into Photoshop. That way you can
adjust brightness/contrast. Save as JPG. Each page separate, that way
new pages can be added easily. Segregated in folders:
Engine/Airframe/Prop. I also have the airworthiness certificates,
mainenance manuals, parts manual, service bulletins, and equipment
operating manuals on the same CD. These were downloaded from the
Diamond website, not scanned. I keep one CD in the safe deposit box and
one in the airplane. That way, if I break down away from home, the A&P
simply has to pop the CD into a PC and we're good to go.

Steve
N432SC

[Joe Johnson]

"Dave Butler" > wrote in message
news:1107462180.541837@sj-nntpcache-5...
> I'm sure some of you here have scanned your logs into a machine readable
format.
> Please let me take advantage of what you've learned.
>
> Do you store the scanned pages as .jpg, or .pdf, or something else?
>
> Each page a separate file?
>
> Any special software?
>
> Did you build an index? If so, how?
>
> Will all the pages of a typical spamcan log fit on a single CD?
>
> Any other hints?
>
> Thanks.

I scan them into *.pdf format. If you have the full Acrobat or other pdf
assembling program, you can incorporate graphic files of a variety of
formats into a pdf document. The advantage is all the pages are in one
place, and can be indexed. A further advantage is that it can be read with
the free Acrobat reader. I back up the log book file along with other
important aviation and other papers.

[Steve]

> Do you store the scanned pages as .jpg, or .pdf, or something else?

By far the best image format choice for scanning black and white documents
is to use the TIFF format with Group 4 encoding. Group 4 is a lossless
compression scheme from the fax standards and can be created and read by
most any software that can process TIFF images. Set the black / white
threshold on the scanner software up to about 2/3 the way towards black to
make sure you pick up the lighter pencil marks and notes. You can keep your
logbook pages as individual tiff files or put the images into MS Word which
handles them well. I scan a lot of documents this way and put the images
into Word to group many together. 500kb jpg files of black and white
documents will become 20kb with Group 4 encoding.

>
> Each page a separate file?

Yes, but then put it in a Word document and you can probably put two logbook
pages on each Word page.

>
> Any special software?

Pretty much anything that will run your scanner. I like MS Photo Editor.

>
> Did you build an index? If so, how?

One way would be to name the files based on their date of entry using a
YYYYMMDD.TIF naming convention.

>
> Will all the pages of a typical spamcan log fit on a single CD?

On a floppy disk if you use Group 4 encoding

>
> Any other hints?

Set you scanner to black & white, not greyscale, and not color, unless your
A&P makes his entries in crayon. Experiment a little for best results on
the black/white threshold settings. Use 300 dpi scanner resolution to pick
up those little scribbles clearly.

Let us know how it turns out.

[dave]

I'm with Joe, pdf is by far the best way to go. PDF's are the standard
for converting paper to a readable format for computers. For windows
you'll need the full version of acrobat or something similar. If you
have a mac you may already have a pdf document creator. There may be
some open soure pdf creator programs out there.

Before I had the full version of acrobat I used jpg's but the ability to
create a single indexed document makes the pdf's much better. As your
log book grows, just keep adding those pages to the document. You may
also want to set your scanning to the page size your scanning. It saves
alot of time. I scanned all of my airplane and pilot logbooks.
Dave
68 7ECA

[Patrick Pohler]

One option you can do is to have it professionally done. There's one
company I know of that will scan your aircraft and engine logbooks,
with searchable index and burn it on a cd. I don't know how much they
charge for the service but there's a demo of what the end result will
look like. I played around with it some time ago. The only downside is
that you won't have the portability as you would a PDF (although I
think you have access to the scanned images as .TIFs). Anyway here's
the link:

http://www.airlogimaging.com/index.html