"Jose" wrote in message
m...
When pilots quote how many hours they have logged, is this a personal log
that is kept, or is every hour you fly entered into a national registry
and formally kept?

It is a personal log; no national registry is kept.

There is no public national registry per se. However, the FAA does track
each active pilot's flight hours, in that they are receiving regular reports
from the pilots when they apply for new certificates (including renewal of
the medical).

That may be irrelevant for the purpose of the original poster's intent
(since the FAA is still just trusting the pilot to report accurate numbers),
but it seems worth pointing out anyway.