Management Software for Gliding Clubs
Management Software for Gliding Clubs
Take your club higher.
Manage2Soar is an open-source platform built to handle the management for everything that a glider club needs: from fleet and flight records to instruction, training, and volunteer management. Streamline your club’s operations management — wherever you fly.
I have visited many soaring clubs around the world, and find that a shocking number of them do not have any sort of technology to manage anything. There might be somebody with a clipboard who writes down when gliders take off and land. At the end of the day, the treasurer receives a wrinkled up cocktail napkin and is expected to decipher the doctor's handwriting to accurately bill the members who flew.
The Manage2Soar software allows the flights to be logged with any laptop, smartphone, or tablet, and allows the Duty Officer to transmit the daily logs to the treasurer. The treasurer can use the Manage2Soar software to import directly into QuickBooks. Your Treasurer will spend significantly less time deciphering your paper log sheets.
There are many soaring clubs where the list of members is maintained by the treasurer, and it is not particularly easy to determine who is and who isn't a current member of that club. This software acts as the ultimate source-of-truth for each member, including their contact information.
Any member can log into the members-only section on manage2soar.com. There, they can find any member, see a profile photo of that member, and get his or her contact information immediately. The membership list can be sorted by active or inactive members, instructors, tow pilots, duty officers.
Before I was a pilot examiner and flight instructor, I found the logging and quality of flight instruction to be wildly inconsistent. I often observed that information sharing between flight instructors consisted of small print with blotchy ink in a rained-on log book. There wasn't much of a safeguard to ensure that a student got all of the training they needed before they were set off to their first solo, or sent to the pilot examiner for the practical test.
The FAA requires that students complete a written test for the aircraft to be soloed. At some clubs, the written test consists of a MS Word document that is revealed only when the student is ready to take the test. Other instructors are not privy to this written test. The questions are poorly-written, the answers incorrect, the test needs to be updated. Who wrote that word document? "Oh that was Bill, he left the club 4 years ago, we don't have the Word document anymore."
I've been at clubs where there was a glider that was taken offline for a maintenance issue, and the word didn't get around. Thankfully a thorough preflight discovered that the glider had been taken out for maintenance. Sometimes, it's less obvious, like an annual inspection wasn't done in time. Where are the log books? They're supposed to be in that cabinet over there, but somebody borrowed the logbooks for some reason.