Ops Manual

The Ops Manual page at https://rotorlab.app/manual builds your operations manual from an interview, and keeps the parts that can be true automatically read from the records you already maintain. Written once in a word processor, a manual becomes fiction: it describes a fleet that has changed and pilots who have left. Here, register an aircraft and it is in the manual.

Publishing a revision freezes the whole document, live sections included, exactly as it read at approval. RotorLab then compares your records against that approved revision and tells you precisely how they have moved on. What it deliberately does not do: monitor regulations. Sections carry the citation they were written against and the date somebody last read them; RotorLab keeps that review clock and nothing more.

Starting a manual#

Press Start a manual. You choose:

• Title.
• Structure: one of the shipped outlines, or Start from a blank manual if none of them fits. The shipped outlines cover the general Part 107 program, public safety, DFR programs, agriculture, delivery, infrastructure inspection, media production, and university programs; each lists its section count in the dropdown. The blank one starts with nothing at all and you write every section.
• Approved by and Their role: the name that signs revisions.
• Effective date.
• Review every: 3, 6, 12, 24, or 36 months. How often you undertake to re-read each section against its reference.

Every section of the chosen structure is laid out immediately, empty and in order, so the document has a shape before anybody has written a word. The structure cannot be changed once sections have been written; start a new manual instead. An organization can hold up to 20 manuals.

Writing sections#

Each section is a card with the question it answers in bold (for example "What limits does every flight operate within?"), a short statement of why the section exists, the regulatory citation it was written against where one applies, and an example answer as the placeholder text. Write your answer and press Save section.

Saving a section also marks it reviewed today, by definition: somebody who has just rewritten a section has just read it. Optional sections (night operations, operations over people, privacy and transparency) carry a Not in this manual toggle; a section switched off is not part of the document and readers never see it.

The page header shows a progress bar of sections written, a table of contents, and a Standing card listing what is not written, what is overdue for review, what is due soon (within 30 days of its review date), and what was never reviewed.

Working through the sections#

An operations manual runs to well over a hundred sections and is written a few at a time. The page is built around finding the ones that still need you rather than scrolling past the ones that do not.

A strip below the title states where the manual stands: how many sections are written of how many, how many reviews are overdue, how many are due inside the notice window, how many sections are written but have never been re-read, how many live blocks have moved on from the approved revision, and the current revision with its effective date.

Above the sections, a search box matches headings, bodies, prompts and citations, and a filter narrows to:

• Not written yet
• Review overdue and Review due soon
• Never reviewed (written, but not re-read since)
• Reads your records (the sections carrying a live block)
• Sections you wrote
• Not in this manual (optional sections switched off)

Next section needing work jumps to the next section that is unwritten or overdue, starting from wherever you are, and puts the cursor in it.

The contents list follows whatever you have narrowed to, and marks each section with a dot: green for written and inside its review interval, amber for unwritten or due, red for overdue, hollow for a section switched off.

While a search or filter is on, the reorder arrows are disabled. An arrow that moved a section past one you cannot see would be a control nobody could predict; clear the filter to reorder.

Sections you write yourself#

+ Add a section at the foot of the manual creates a section that is entirely yours: your heading, your words, your place in the running order. No template supplies it, so nothing in RotorLab will ever reword, renumber or remove it, and it never appears in template drift.

The dialog asks for:

• Heading: what the section is called in the contents and in the exported document.
• What it covers: optional, a line to yourself and to whoever re-reads the section at review time.
• The question it answers: optional, shown above the writing box exactly the way the shipped sections work.
• Place it: at the end, or directly after any existing section.

Your sections carry a your section pill. Heading on the section reopens the dialog to change the title or the two guidance lines, and Delete section removes it along with anything written in it. Published revisions keep their own copy, so deleting a section never reaches back into a document that was already approved.

Sections that come from a template cannot be deleted, because the template still asks for them and they would reappear the next time the manual was laid out. Switch those off with Not in this manual instead.

The up and down arrows in any section's heading move it. Reordering applies to the whole manual, template sections included, so an outline can be rearranged into the order your own document uses.

A manual started from Start from a blank manual begins empty and is built entirely this way. It cannot be published until it has at least one section, since approving an empty document would put a signature on nothing.

Live blocks: sections that read your records#

Five sections carry a reads your records pill and render a table straight from the rest of RotorLab:

A live block supplements its section; it does not write it. "How an aircraft is brought into service" is prose, and a table of aircraft is not an answer to it, so a derived section still has to be written like any other.

Publishing a revision#

Publish a revision asks who approved it and what changed, then freezes the manual as the next numbered revision: the prose, the live blocks exactly as they read at that moment, and a SHA-256 content hash. A published revision is never modified; it is the permanent record of what the organization committed to. Publishing is refused while any included section is still empty, and the error names the empty sections.

Revisions opens the history: every revision with its date, approver, and change summary. View any revision as approved and download it, or pick two revisions and press Compare to see, section by section, what was added, removed, rewritten, included, or excluded between them.

Download exports the manual as plain text: title page with revision number, approver, effective date, and content hash, a table of contents, every included section with its citation, the live tables, and a basis statement saying which parts were generated from records and that RotorLab does not monitor regulations.

Drift: when reality moves on#

Every published revision stores a digest of what each live block said. RotorLab compares those digests with what the records say now, item by item, and the Your records have moved on panel gives a precise answer: which blocks changed, what was added, and what is no longer present (two aircraft added, an authorization expired, a checklist retired). When the manual reflects the change, publish a new revision.

The manual board summarizes every manual's state: Current, Review due, Needs attention (something unwritten, overdue, or drifted), or Draft (never published). The Ops Dashboard manuals tile shows the same counts of overdue, due soon, drifted, and unanswered sections.

Related#

• Fleet Manager
• Checklists
• Authorizations
• Public Reporting