Flying Club Maintenance Officer?

Robert M. Gary wrote:

Yes, I've done this job with just one airplane. It take a ton of time.
Between making sure the IFR cert, the ELT inspection, etc is done you
also are always on the phone making sure you are on the schedule for
annual, ordering small parts to save money, tracking down shipments,
sending off oil analysis, etc ,etc. Add to that any need to move the
plane for maintenance since few fields have all the different types of
maintenance available. I am 100% sure that a club with 3 planes could
take 20 hours a week. Perhaps each plane needs its own guy?

The club I just recently joined has a "captain" for each plane, as well as
the club's MO. I've no idea what is involved, but I'm hoping to learn: I
just volunteered as unskilled labor to one of the captains.

With respect to what you wrote above, cannot at least some of these be
simplified with automation? I mean: annual and 24 month inspections just
shouldn't be too tough with one of the many calendar/scheduling tools
floating around.

Those that involve tach time are a little tougher, in that they require
input from "outside" (ie. how much the plane has flown). As I understand
it, in our club we're to send finishing tach times to the plane captain via
email for this purpose. I expect a web application tied into billing in
the not-distant future.

Hmm...anyone know of freeware around supporting these activities?

- Andrew

Our club uses www.myfbo.com for scheduling, billing and mx tracking.
The owner has been great in customizing. And it's not very expensive.

Tony


Andrew Gideon wrote in message ...
Robert M. Gary wrote:

Yes, I've done this job with just one airplane. It take a ton of time.
Between making sure the IFR cert, the ELT inspection, etc is done you
also are always on the phone making sure you are on the schedule for
annual, ordering small parts to save money, tracking down shipments,
sending off oil analysis, etc ,etc. Add to that any need to move the
plane for maintenance since few fields have all the different types of
maintenance available. I am 100% sure that a club with 3 planes could
take 20 hours a week. Perhaps each plane needs its own guy?

The club I just recently joined has a "captain" for each plane, as well as
the club's MO. I've no idea what is involved, but I'm hoping to learn: I
just volunteered as unskilled labor to one of the captains.

With respect to what you wrote above, cannot at least some of these be
simplified with automation? I mean: annual and 24 month inspections just
shouldn't be too tough with one of the many calendar/scheduling tools
floating around.

Those that involve tach time are a little tougher, in that they require
input from "outside" (ie. how much the plane has flown). As I understand
it, in our club we're to send finishing tach times to the plane captain via
email for this purpose. I expect a web application tied into billing in
the not-distant future.

Hmm...anyone know of freeware around supporting these activities?

- Andrew

Tony wrote:

Our club uses www.myfbo.com for scheduling, billing and mx tracking.
The owner has been great in customizing. And it's not very expensive.

Has anyone compared this to schedulemaster.com? My club uses that, but I've
seen a little of myfbo too as a local FBO uses it. I don't know either
well enough to compare, though.

- Andrew

In a previous article, Andrew Gideon said:
Tony wrote:
Our club uses www.myfbo.com for scheduling, billing and mx tracking.
The owner has been great in customizing. And it's not very expensive.

Has anyone compared this to schedulemaster.com? My club uses that, but I've
seen a little of myfbo too as a local FBO uses it. I don't know either
well enough to compare, though.

There appears to be a "unbiased" comparison at
http://myfbo.com/myfbo/comparison.htm
ScheduleMaster is "Online System S". Actually, ScheduleMaster has some
new features that aren't on that list.

One thing I'd have to investigate before we considered moving to myfbo
from ScheduleMaster is how easy it is to use from a touch tone phone. Our
members do a lot of that.




--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
Last I checked, it wasn't the power cord for the Clue Generator
that was sticking up your ass.
-- John Novak