Comparison
Digital logbook for paragliding: what changes vs Excel
June 14, 2026
Many pilots keep their flights in an Excel sheet: date, site, duration. It works, but it stops at the table row. A digital logbook starts from the IGC and derives much more. Here is the comparison, without overselling.
What does Excel do well?
A spreadsheet is simple, yours and offline. For noting date, take-off, landing, duration and a few personal notes it is perfect, and it depends on no service.
What can Excel not do?
The limit arrives when you want to understand the flight, not just record it. A sheet does not read the track: everything inside the IGC stays unused.
- 3D replay: watch the line back on real terrain, instead of imagining it from a cell.
- Derived metrics: glides, climb rate, altitude and distance computed from the B-records, not typed in by hand.
- Map and thermals: where you found lift and where you lost altitude, on the map.
- Automatic trends: the season that updates itself with every flight uploaded.
- Comparison: putting two flights or two pilots side by side with the same parameters.
When does it make sense to switch to a digital logbook?
If you fly rarely and a list is enough, Excel is perfectly fine: no need to change. But if you fly XC and want to understand why one flight went better than another, the sheet becomes the bottleneck: the data is already in the IGC, but you are not reading it.
RSFly.app starts here: you upload the IGC and the logbook, replay and metrics build themselves, staying private until you choose to share them.
In short
- Excel is great for noting; it cannot read the IGC track.
- A digital logbook derives replay, metrics and maps from the flight, with no manual entry.
- If you fly rarely a sheet is enough; if you fly XC the value is in the data Excel ignores.