Maintenance

The Maintenance page at https://rotorlab.app/maintenance is the record of the parts that wear and the work raised on them. It tracks two things: components (a serialized registry of motors, packs, props, and anything else with a life worth tracking) and work orders (what has to be done and what was done about it).

The load-bearing idea is that life is spent by flying, not by typing. A component's hours come from its aircraft's own accumulated flight time since the part was fitted, and that figure comes from the flights on record. Nobody keys in an hours figure, so nobody can key in the wrong one. Move a part to another airframe and its service history follows it.

The top of the page shows five counters: Grounding, Open work, Past due, Parts at a limit, and In service. Below them, three tabs: Work board, Components, and By aircraft. If you belong to more than one organization, an Organization picker appears above the counters.

Components and life limits#

Open the Components tab and press Add a component to put a part on the books. The form takes:

Limits come in three kinds because parts age in three ways: hours (a motor bearing wears while it turns), flights (a battery pack ages per charge, counted as flights), and months (a rubber part perishes on the shelf whether it flies or not). A component may carry more than one limit, and whichever comes due first governs.

A component's status is one of in service, spare, removed, or scrapped. The table shows each part's life used as a bar per limit, its total hours and cycles, and a status pill. Life status is computed from the tightest limit:

• Due soon at 85 percent of any limit. The bar turns amber.
• Over at or past 100 percent. The bar turns red and the part counts in Parts at a limit.
• A part with no limits shows "no limit set".

A spare's months-in-service clock keeps running on the shelf; only hours and flights stop accruing when it comes off an aircraft.

Moving a part between airframes#

Fitting is its own operation, not a field edit. When you change the Fitted to aircraft on an existing component, RotorLab banks the life the part accrued on its previous airframe and starts counting from the new aircraft's current totals. A part that has been around three airframes reports the sum, not the last leg. The component dialog says so: it shows total hours run, including hours banked on earlier airframes.

Remove from aircraft takes a part off and asks where it goes: spare, removed, or scrapped. Its accrued life is banked either way, so it keeps its history whether it goes on the shelf or in the bin. Delete removes the component and its life history entirely.

An organization can track up to 5,000 components.

The work board#

The Work board tab lists work orders, sorted grounding first, then by due date, then by age. Raise a work order opens the form:

• Common jobs: one-click starters (Replace propellers, Replace motor, Retire battery pack, Scheduled inspection, Firmware update, Investigate vibration, Repair airframe damage) that fill the title and a sensible priority.
• What: the title, up to 160 characters.
• Aircraft and Component: the component list narrows to the parts fitted to the chosen aircraft, so an order cannot name a part that is not on that airframe.
• Priority: routine (next time it is in), soon (plan it in), urgent (before the next flight), or grounding (do not fly until fixed). Grounding means the aircraft is out of service until the order is closed.
• Due by: a date, with Today, 1 week, 1 month, and Clear shortcuts.
• Assigned to: a person in the organization, or unassigned.
• Detail: what was seen, and anything the person doing the work needs to know.

Opening an existing order adds a Status dropdown (open, in progress, done, cancelled) and a What was done field. Closing an order as done records the action taken against the aircraft; an order closed with no action is a ticket, not a maintenance record. Deleting asks for confirmation and reminds you that closing as done keeps the record.

Due dates drive two computed states shown on the board: overdue (the date has passed, shown in red with days late) and due soon (due within 7 days, shown in amber). An organization can hold up to 20,000 work orders.

Automatic work: Check for new work#

Press Check for new work and RotorLab sweeps every aircraft for work its own records already justify:

• A Fleet Health flag. Severe vibration, motor imbalance, or a crash on the last flight raise a grounding order; high vibration raises urgent; battery sag, rising vibration, motor spread, and similar trends raise soon.
• A component at or past a life limit. Over the limit raises a grounding order; due soon raises soon.

Each automatic order names its origin (health or life) and the flights it was drawn from, and the same finding never raises a second order while one is already open or in progress. Running the sweep repeatedly is safe; if there is nothing new it says "Nothing new: everything already on the board."

Due and overdue warnings elsewhere#

The By aircraft tab summarizes each airframe: hours, flights, open work, grounding orders, parts due, and component count.

On the Ops Dashboard, the Airworthiness tile reads the same maintenance overview: it goes red when anything is grounding, amber when orders are overdue or parts are at a limit, and lists the open orders and due components with a link back to Maintenance. The dashboard's headline stats also show a grounded count alongside open work orders.

Finding things#

The Work board searches across titles, detail, aircraft and assignee, and narrows by priority, aircraft, or who it is assigned to (including Unassigned). Every column header sorts: due date, priority, status, aircraft, assignee. Due date sorts soonest-first, and a work order with no date set sorts to the end rather than to the front.

The Components list searches names, serials, positions and aircraft, and narrows by kind or by which airframe a part is fitted to (including On the shelf). It opens sorted by life used, worst first. A part carrying no limit has no life to compare, so it sorts below every part that does rather than above them as a zero.

Every aircraft named anywhere on the page opens that aircraft's record, and so does every person a work order is assigned to.

Related#

• Fleet Manager
• Fleet Health
• Ops Dashboard
• Checklists