chris spierings

Guys,

This has all been good information and reading. I really appreciate the
input, keep it coming.

I think the time demands for our MO have stemmed from a number of things:

1. A very poor maintenance officer preceding him
2. Most of the recent squaks have been avionics related and if you go
and check on some of my old posts you'll notice that the local avionics
shop has some issues. Like newly installed Garmin 430s falling out of
the panel on rotation. Transponders not secured or hooked up. The
avionics shop is poorly run and does piss poor work in my book. I don't
get to control where the work is done in this regard.
3. He is a very conscientious guy

I like the concept of having a MO and assistant for each plane. I'd
love to be involved with the maintenance more. I know I don't have the
time to devote those kinds of hours to this every week.

If you've got other ideas please keep them coming. The guy who has
agreed to fill in for our retiring MO is a good friend and a great guy
but he doesn't have the time nor is he even in the Midwest (where the
planes are based) very much so I'm dubious about where things are going
to go.

Chris

tonyaldi

Chris,

I am the Operations Officer for our club of 4 aircraft,
http://www.glendaleflying.com. I am not a A&P, so it I had a learning curve.
I think it was a great move. I have learned more about ever system of
our planes than I thought I would. You will discuss issues with
mechanics, research regs, AD, SB and get some hands on experience if
you really get into it. You can get familiar enough to order your own
parts and save money that way as well. I have been very envolved with
the purchase of our 4th plane and buying a new engine for our Skylane.
I could have never done that on my own without the help of a lottery.

I have started to do all of our own preventative mx, which has saved
the club a lot of money. This all does take a lot of my time, but I
feel compensated with education. I feel very comfortable that if I am
stranded at an aiport away from home with a mx issue, I will be able
to have a good idea of what the problem is and the level of
seriousness it brings.

We originally has a crew chief for each aircraft as well, but I soon
found myself managing 4 people as well as 4 aircraft. If your help
isn't deticated things don't get done. I now have an assistant that I
can really count on to help keep thind supplies, make some calls and
ferry some planes.

If you take the position, enjoy it. Feel free to contact me further
if you'd like.

Tony
http://www.glendaleflying.com

montblack

(Read this on your club's website - History. http://www.glendaleflying.com)

Glendale has always been based at Bowman Field in Louisville, Kentucky, at
one time the busiest airport in the country.

Really? When? More history please.

Very nice website, BTW. Enjoy looking at the trip photos.

--
Montblack

cskyhawk

Nice site, but...

....85$/hr for a wet tach 182?! I have to stop reading non-Bay Area
club web sites I get too depressed.

rmg1

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 ****ysis, 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?
-Robert

andrew gideon

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

andrew gideon

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

andrew gideon

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

ptomblin

In a previous article, Andrew Gideon <ag7337@gideon.org> said:

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.

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 <ptomblin@xcski.com> 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

tony_aldi

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.