Night Flying Hours

[Cargodawgs]

Hi all,

I’m looking to solving a little project of mind which is a little (actually a lot) out of my punny little brain. My job is to fly from point A to B and it requires me to log in my flight time in day and night hours. Thus I have written my own spreadsheet and this is the last puzzle that I cannot solve.

I'm really looking for something that I can enter as below
Date: 22 Feb 2020
Departure: KDFW (DALLAS) 0314Z
Arrival: EBBR (BRUSSELS) 1215z

And it will pop out with
Flight time: 9:01hrs
Night: 4:51hrs (for example)

There are apps with this function such as mccPILOTLOG. However I would wish to implement it into my spreadsheet so I don’t have to open up another app to check the night hours.
All help is greatly appreciated!

 

[6StringJazzer]

What is the definition for day and night hours?
Total flight time, using actual time values, is
=IF(A2<A1,24,0)+A2-A1

You should format your spreadsheet like this, with times in their own cells.

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Data Range

	A​	B​	C​	D​	E​
1​	Date​	​	22-Feb​	​	​
2​	Departure​	KDFW (DALLAS)​	0314Z​	​	You must type in these times like 03:14​
3​	Arrival​	EBBR (BRUSSELS)​	1215Z​	​	​
4​	​	​	​	​	​
5​	​	Flight Time​	9:01​	hrs​	​
6​	​	Night​	​	hrs​	​

 

[6StringJazzer]

Hmm. Looks like you are after this:

• The end of evening civil twilight to the beginning of morning civil twilight
  • You can log night flight time, and your plane needs to be night equipped

This is very complicated and I don't think you will get Excel to do it for you without a custom add-in or template. The problem is that, such as in the example you gave, you have to determine evening twilight and morning twilight in different locations that might be quite far apart. Those two times are different every day. And you are going to have weird cases like taking off just after sundown, flying east, and arriving before sundown (you might have to go pretty fast to do this, but you get the idea).

That is why there are apps for this.

 

[Cargodawgs]

Hmm. Looks like you are after this:

• The end of evening civil twilight to the beginning of morning civil twilight
  • You can log night flight time, and your plane needs to be night equipped

This is very complicated and I don't think you will get Excel to do it for you without a custom add-in or template. The problem is that, such as in the example you gave, you have to determine evening twilight and morning twilight in different locations that might be quite far apart. Those two times are different every day. And you are going to have weird cases like taking off just after sundown, flying east, and arriving before sundown (you might have to go pretty fast to do this, but you get the idea).

That is why there are apps for this.

Exactly right! Looks like I have no choice but to reply on apps. But can't help feeling how the apps manage to do it as well. The night hours varies pretty widely among different apps. At least among quite a few that I tried.
Anyway, appreciate the reply.