Flying Club Maintenance Officer?

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

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 20:34:54 +0000 (UTC), (Paul
Tomblin) wrote:

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.

For what it's worth, our club uses Yahoo Calendar for aircraft
scheduling. Each plane has a username (its tail number) and a
password. Members sign into the Yahoo calendar function with the
aircraft ID and reserve and cancel time that way.

Not a good idea for a large membership with a lot of churn, but for
us, with eleven members, two planes, and a fairly high price to buy
in, it works fine.

Don

Paul Tomblin wrote:


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.

Much is left unclear. For example, what is the difference between "tracks
maintenance" and "schedules maintenance"? And just how does "projects when
aircraft maintenance will be needed" work? Does this project against
average daily usage, or something else?

It does make myfbo look more attractive (big surprise, eh?), but I wonder
what features it's not listing.

One thing not discussed on that page is how scheduling rules are expressed.
The club to which I belong just changed from one type of policy (a certain
number of bookings) to another (a certain number of points, with different
bookings having different point "costs"). This is likely unimportant for
an FBO, but I doubt we're the only club to use this sort of thing.

Schedulemaster has no problem with this. Yet this is a feature not on the
list at the above URL.

- Andrew

In a previous article, Andrew Gideon said:
Much is left unclear. For example, what is the difference between "tracks
maintenance" and "schedules maintenance"? And just how does "projects when
aircraft maintenance will be needed" work? Does this project against
average daily usage, or something else?

Well, it also says that it tracks aircraft usage. One thing our club is
considering is buying an extra cost option from ScheduleMaster so that
when a person comes back, they enter their tach hours before and after
into SM as well as the paper slips we have now, and that would simplify
our billing. But if myfbo does that already, and uses that information to
say, issue a warning that an oil change is due or whatever, so much the
better.

One thing not discussed on that page is how scheduling rules are expressed.
The club to which I belong just changed from one type of policy (a certain
number of bookings) to another (a certain number of points, with different
bookings having different point "costs"). This is likely unimportant for
an FBO, but I doubt we're the only club to use this sort of thing.

Our club has some even more complicated rules.

If you're a student pilot, you can only book the Warrior, and you can have
as many booking as you want on the system.

If you're a regular pilot, you can only book the Warrior up to 14 days in
advance - so the students get first crack at it. Also, you can only have
6 bookings on the system total for times beyond 14 days from the present,
but unlimited bookings within 14 days.

We asked, and ScheduleMaster provided that rule for us.

I've got to say, though, that looking at myfbo's demo site, their
scheduling page is ugly as a mud fence.

--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
Make backups before you try something new or interesting or experimental
or radical or if the day has a "y" in it.
-- Chris Hacking

The mx tracking in MyFBO is entirely customizable. You enter the
task, AD, part or whatever and what interval you want to assign to it.
Then on the mx due screen you can see what is projected to be due
based on the schedule of the aircraft. Squawks can be entered be the
member at checkin time which are emailed to me immediately.

There are also a number of statistical report to track how much
utilization a plane has with billed time and reserved time. We love
it.



Andrew Gideon wrote in message ...
Paul Tomblin wrote:


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.

Much is left unclear. For example, what is the difference between "tracks
maintenance" and "schedules maintenance"? And just how does "projects when
aircraft maintenance will be needed" work? Does this project against
average daily usage, or something else?

It does make myfbo look more attractive (big surprise, eh?), but I wonder
what features it's not listing.

One thing not discussed on that page is how scheduling rules are expressed.
The club to which I belong just changed from one type of policy (a certain
number of bookings) to another (a certain number of points, with different
bookings having different point "costs"). This is likely unimportant for
an FBO, but I doubt we're the only club to use this sort of thing.

Schedulemaster has no problem with this. Yet this is a feature not on the
list at the above URL.

- Andrew