Launch point logging software flight accounting
stevehaley
software.
At present we have a legacy system handling flight recording from
paper records taken at the launch point with a link to our accounting
system which was written by a club member who left some time ago and
the system should probably be overhauled/replaced regardless of adding
a launchpoint bit. While it does tick the simple easy to use box I
suspect that savings could be made in terms of staff time entering the
data later.
I suspect that many other clubs are in a similar position or are
paying for the software. I would like to explore the possibility of a
collaborative venture making the end result open source which will
hopefully ensure that the support continues into the future and the
package moves forward
Would anyone who is interested in participating please contact me on
the email address below. Would also be interested to hear from anyone
who has a good robust system and is willing to donate it to the
community as a starting point.
A critical mass of at least 5-6 clubs and 4+ developers is probably
required - location is not seen as an issue and it should be easy
enough to make the software multilingual.
I would also like to hear of other clubs experiences using launchpoint
logging systems with respect to reliability, redundancy, ease of use
etc etc.
rgds
Stephen
sjhcon_at_gmail.com
bildan
Good idea.
It strikes me that if both gliders and tugs carried GPS loggers, all
flight data could be automatically captured except for matching
flights to member names which should be fairly easy to do manually.
Tows would be matched to glider flights since the logs are time
stamped. A tow starting at exactly the same time as a glider flight
would link them together.
A software package that created a daily screen from the logs data
where pilot names could be entered manually would make billing easier
- and a lot more accurate.
India November
Stephen,
You may like the look of the software for gliding clubs described at
the following page.
http://datamodus.net/Index.htm
My club looked at it several years ago. We didn't go ahead (& still
use pen and paper), so no guarantees, but at least the supplier seemed
genuine.
Ian Grant
ian dot grant12 at gmail,com
Dave Nadler
Do consider practical issues such as:
- you can't see most computer screens outdoors
- power will be needed near launch point
- computaphobes in club
- affect of rain on komputers
- komputers often break
- ease of info transfer from field to wherever billing is done
Keep a paper backup in any case !
From a guy who specializes in practical solutions ;-)
See ya, Dave
Dave Springford
have gone back to a paper system with the data entered into the
accounting system at a later time. The intent of the computer system
was to save the time punching in all the flight data. As it turns
out, it didn't actually make much difference in time-savings over the
course of a year.
Some of the problems are much as Dave mentions above, such as a power
source at the launch point and computaphobes.
Other problems included:
1. The issue of small mid-week operation not taking the computer to
the launch point to enter the flights (too much effort for just a
couple of flights) and then someone else having to enter all the mid-
week flights before the Saturday morning operation could start.
2. Entering new members into the system at the launch point - the
member database was not easily updated on the fly.
3. Errors entered into the launch point computer are transmitted
directly into the billing system. If there is no paper trail, these
can be difficult to correct.
With the paper system, one person in a quiet space enters all the data
and checks it for validity before it gets to the billing system.
Granted, this person does a lot of data entry, but we have also found
that they catch 99% of the errors before the numbers hit the billing
system.
Our system (for a club of about 150 members with about 3500 flights
per year) now works like this.
a. The pilot fills out a flight card before take-off with glider ID,
their name and account #, type of flight and tow height. (types of
flight include Intro/Famil flight, student flight, solo flight, flight
in private ship etc)
b. The flight card is passed to the time keeper who enters the flight
on the daily log sheet, assigns a flight number and then adds take-off
and landing time on the card.
c. The card is a two part carbon form, where one copy goes to the
accounting system and the other goes to the pilot after the flight
d. The flight info from all cards is entered into our "flight card
processor" (FCP). This is a program written in Visual Basic with a MS
Access backbone. This converts the feet and minutes for each flight
into dollars and cents. It also produces a monthly listing for each
member with all the details for each flight.
e. At the end of each month the FCP data is entered into the
accounting system (Quickbooks)
f. Statements are emailed to each member the first week of each month
with a complete listing of all their flight details from the FCP, as
well as all the credits/debits to their account from Quickbooks.
Andy
You could consider using digital pen technology with a template that
specifies all the relevant flight info fields to be filled out:
At least then you'd have a paper copy of all the original entries.
You'd need to figure out the OCR part - which in theory would be
easier as you'd know whether each field was alpha or numeric - but
even so it would be a fair amount of coding. And you'd need to make
sure nobody lost the pen!
Bill mentions integrating with GPS loggers. While interesting I think
it may be overkill for the simple purpose of getting flight times -
unless you had a wireless way of downloading everything from the
aircraft. Even more coding and the wireless technology on loggers
isn't quite available yet.
9B
bildan
Wireless tech would make a nifty system but it isn't absolutely
needed. If the GPS loggers recorded on SD cards, just bring them to
the club office for the software to read. You'd still have to
manually log who flew which glider but the altitudes and flight
durations would be perfectly accurate.
Andy
Here's a logger with SD capability and Bluetooth:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8823
I still see a few potential problems:
- I you relieve the ops/launch director and tow pilots from recording
times and altitudes you are making the day's operations subject to the
reliability of the technology. Since tow pilots wouldn't be using the
logger for anything related to their duties they would have no idea
whether it is functioning properly until the end of day data
collection exercise - at which point it's really too late to recover.
If you keep written logs as a backup you are giving up most of the
benefit as I don't see much operational benefit to the end of day
accounting - in one case you have to download a bunch of logs and
manually sync them up with the aircraft bring towed versus simply
putting in the altitudes and registration numbers off the tow pilots'
sheets.
- There are similar issues for logging club glider flights. Managing
SD cards, making sure they are in and that the logger battery is
charged before each flight are a couple of the operational issues I
can imagine.
- Wireless would be a way for the ops director to sync up after each
flight and ensure that everything is working properly - but then you'd
have to have a process to acquire the signal from the towplane each
time. Bluetooth isn't great at this and the loggers may not be smart
enough to automatically download.
- At $150 a pop this becomes expensive, particularly if you want to
include gliders in addition to just towplanes. You might rather have
igc loggers in gliders, but that is even more expensive.
- Even with all of this you still have to sync up each flight/tow with
a customer. Some people just aren't good at doing this on a computer
versus pen and paper.
Not that it couldn't be done - eventually it will be I expect. But you
need to get the infrastructure in place - I expect pure record keeping
isn't enough justification for most clubs. A first step would be
allowing off-the-shelf commercial loggers to be used for badge
flights. If you already had a logger in every aircraft it would open
up their use for other purposes.
For the flight line I expect a touchscreen e-paper tablet would be a
good solution.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/03/hands-on-with-asus-dual-panel-touchscreen-pc-at-cebit/
Still needs development...
9B
BT
loading into a computer and adding pilot billing accounts would take more
time than transferring a manual log to a spreadsheet.
The trick is to get the spreadsheet data into the accounting and billing
system.
"bildan" <bil...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:b7adc36c-e09f-4b7d...@j19g2000yqk.googlegroups.com...
BT
loading into a computer and adding pilot billing accounts would take more
time than transferring a manual log to a spreadsheet.
The trick is to get the spreadsheet data into the accounting and billing
system.
"bildan" <bil...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:b7adc36c-e09f-4b7d...@j19g2000yqk.googlegroups.com...
Andy
Partly true. It only works for the towed pilots who give you a log
file - absent that you have a mixed system of computer and manual
matching, which of course means that the tow pilots or ops director
need some sort of hand-written record.
9B
Craig
>
> Still needs development...
>
> 9B
Seems like existing package tracking technology using bar codes could
be pretty easily implemented. There are ruggedized hand held scanners
that are used in shipping ports, etc. Each glider would have a bar
code label as would each pilot. There might even be a way to put a
tag at the end of the towrope identifying the towplane, although this
end of the rope gets a lot of abuse. Scans at take off and landing
would log all the important info. A paper backup and option for
exceptions would need to be handy, but overall it could reduce the
effort of time entry for billing.
Craig
Darryl Ramm
I suspect many places would not think it was a good idea to burden the
flight line crew in immediate proximity to the glider with data
collection responsibilities. Those folks should focus on safe handling
and launch of the gliders. In some places they do take tow-tickets
etc. from pilots but in many others the recording is done near flight
line by other staff. Then for large scale operations with gliders
rolling out after landing over large areas you want somebody to go
chase down each glider to record a landing? Then what about visiting
gliders or pilots who forget their barcode badge?
I think many of these ideas are solutions seeking a problem. A pencil
and paper seems pretty neat to me. The places this works best I've
seen use either tow-tickets handed to the ground staff before push-out
(or no push-out) or have a person dedicated to just writing down tow
plane, take off time, contest IDs/pilot names. Both seem relatively
easy to correlate to the tow-plane log.
But wait - there is ADS-B (or Flarm) as long as all tow planes and
gliders are in range of a base-station receiver you could just work it
out from that data. But again, I think this is (even more) technology
looking for a problem solvable with pen and paper (high contrast,
daylight viewable, ulta-low power, archival, digital (your
fingers), ....).
Darryl
bildan
Hey, don't knock technology. It's -5C and snowing outside and
discussions like this are fun.
So, how about club membership cards with RFID chips? The glider's
logging device recognizes the RFID chip in the members wallet so the
glider flight time log can be connected with the members name for
billing.
There may be no need for a logger in the tug since glider flight
analysis software now can reliably recognize release heights.
If the loggers have enough flash memory, the club treasurer can
collect the data from the loggers once a month.
Darryl Ramm
You need to move to a warmer climate :-)
Technology is wonderful, I can see somebody casually wandering by the
flight line with their RFID card in their wallet and being billed for
the next tow.
If untangling written records is hard now, think what untangling this
will be with missing/deleted log files, dead flight recorders, wrong
glider/pilot info in the files, ID cards/devices mixed up etc.
Darryl
bildan
No problem. Just program the logging device to read the RFID card at
tow release. It's pretty hard to read the wrong RFID card that far
from the flight line. Or just read and log the RFID card every 15
minutes during the flight.
Martin Gregorie
> No problem. Just program the logging device to read the RFID card at
> tow release. It's pretty hard to read the wrong RFID card that far
> from the flight line. Or just read and log the RFID card every 15
> minutes during the flight.
>
Murphy says it would probably bill a day's flying to the instructor
rather than his students.
--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |
bildan
wrote:
Easy to set the software to never charge an instructor unless it's a
solo flight. If it's a non-instructional shared-cost joyride, it
would be up the the instructor to see that his passenger is not
automatically charged for the whole flight. The software would also
know it's an instructor's duty day and not charge him.
On the other hand, a club using manual paper records charged over
$1000 of my student's fees to my account. When a challenged the fees,
the said the paper logs were lost and refused to reverse the charges.
It was an effort to force instructors to do all the club's
accounting. This even though I charged nothing for my services. I
eventually just paid it and left the club. Some clubs wonder why they
can't get instructors.
Having GPS logs for every flight in every glider could also be very
useful to the safety committee investigating an incident and for
instructors keeping an eye on their solo students.
valsoar
logging at the launch point. Easy to log flights, no batteries
required, no sunlight readability problems, no 'computer training'
required for loggers and our launch point is open to the elements and
has no power.
What I did was build a MS Access program into which the logsheet can
be keyed (columns on paper logsheets match exactly data entry columns
in the program). This makes it pretty easy and fast to key in the
logsheet at the end of the day. The MS Access program uses QOBC (ODBC
driver for quickbooks) and turns each flight into multiple
transactions which get pushed automatically into quickbooks. Each one
line flight record entered in Access feeds separate Tow and rental or
lesson charges to quickbooks together with credits for the instructors
and tow-pilots or commerical pilots flying rides. So basically we key
in the logsheet once and at the end of the month members get emailed
statements from quickbooks with all their charges detailed out. The
Access program also serves as a log-book for all the clubs members and
gliders (including reminders of when 100hrs are due etc). The flight
logs are also ftp'd weekly from our Access database to our website (in
Excel format) so that any members can check the logsheet detail if
they have a question when they get their statement or even simply if
they need info to fill in their logbook. It's not launch point but it
works pretty well.
Alasdair Crawford
www.valleysoaring.org
Martin Gregorie
> On Dec 3, 12:21 pm, Martin Gregorie <mar...@address-in-sig.invalid>
> wrote:
>
>> Murphy says it would probably bill a day's flying to the instructor
>> rather than his students.
>
> Easy to set the software to never charge an instructor unless it's a
> solo flight. If it's a non-instructional shared-cost joyride, it would
> be up the the instructor to see that his passenger is not automatically
> charged for the whole flight. The software would also know it's an
> instructor's duty day and not charge him.
>
I was meaning that the RFID reader might refuse to read anything but the
instructor's tag.
I know nothing about RFID readers and whether they can get locked onto
the 'loudest' tag, but if its a cheap reader, cheap tags and there's the
faintest possibility of this happening, Murphy will make sure it does
while ensuring that his intervention isn't believed.
bildan
RFID chips are used massively in product manufacturing, warehousing,
shipping and retailing. It's a highly developed and VERY reliable
technology. Each chip is less than $0.05. Probably billions of them
are in use.
One can buy serialized plastic ID cards with them cheaply. The
misread rate is extremely low. A logger that could also read an RFID
chip would be the missing part. Automatic billing could be added to a
program like SeeYou as a feature.