John,

In my club(s) we make a schedule that covers most of our soaring season.
Early May to the end of September. We have a towpilot every weekend day
and Holiday, two line managers, and we have recently added instructors on
Saturdays.

I think all of our instructors are also towpilots, but not all the
towpilots are instructors. Towpilots get either 3 or 4 days per summer,
and instructors, I beleive get 3 days each. Line managers are each asked
to sign up for three days.

Schedule is made similar to Ray L's club. I do the towpilot (as the
Towplane Manager), one of the instructors does them, and the current
President has been handling the line crew.

We generally will put anyone on the line crew schedule that had a tow last
year, we think they will be out this year, and if they are not an
instructor or tow pilot. We do make exceptions for our more senior
members, as they are usually there to help take care of us with water,
kind words, and a good smile if they aren't flying.

We often have no-shows, but have not tried to implement any fines. Since
our club dues are so low, a fine will likely just make them walk away and
say "Now who's gonna help you fly?"

We try to publish the entire schedule in the club newsletter every month.
We have also recently started using mycalendars.net. Set up yourself or
your club, and you can have things public or password view protected.

If you can't make your day, it is up to you to find a fill-in. As I
said, we don't always have perfect attendance, so some people get to fill
in on short notice. I try to encourage those that fill in to contact the
one they filled in for to see if they traded, forgot, or what, so they can
get their duty day back. Most people don't like to do that, though.
Again, we could consider fines for not showing up, but most of the days
are assigned to people, and not picked by them. Also, a fine would likely
be an excuse to just not show up anymore for some.

Full time students haven't been much of an issue for us, sad to say. I
would suggest that if they can't be on the schedule, ask them to come out
on some not flyable day and do some work for the club. Like, wash the
plane, mow grass, clean bathroom, etc. Just some of the little things
that need to be done that anyone can do.

We had a one page summary of line manager procedures, but I am not sure
where it went. Our instructors have a standard syllabus for training to
hopefully help with continuity from one instructor to the next with a
student. Towpilots have a wide variation, but we try hard to control the
engine handling procedure. It sort of works.

Hope this has helped.

Steve Leonard
Kansas Soaring Association
Wichita Soaring Association