RotorLab Launches Vendor-Agnostic System of Record for Drone Programs

RotorLab is a vendor-agnostic system of record for organizations that operate unmanned aircraft.

Flight logs, currency, maintenance and authorizations in one record, built to survive a change of aircraft manufacturer.

DUBUQUE, IA, UNITED STATES, August 7, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- RotorLab today announced the general availability of RotorLab.app, a system of record for organizations that operate unmanned aircraft. The platform consolidates flight logs, pilot currency, maintenance, authorizations, and safety reporting into a single record, built so the record survives a change of aircraft manufacturer.

The launch comes as public safety agencies and commercial operators nationwide plan fleet transitions. The programs having the hardest time are not those replacing aircraft, but those discovering that their flight history, maintenance and pilot hours sit inside software that only supported the outgoing fleet.

"The program is not the aircraft. The program is the record of how the aircraft were used," said Nick Donarski, technical founder of RotorLab. "An airframe lasts three to five years. Retention obligations run seven or more, and an audit arrives whenever it wants. We built RotorLab so the records outlive the hardware."

RotorLab identifies aircraft by the autopilot's hardware unique identifier rather than a vendor serial scheme, and derives flight hours from armed time in the logs. Operators can move between manufacturers without breaking the history, the asset that regulators, insurers, and courts ask about.

One Record, Read by Everything Else

RotorLab captures 70 data points on every flight. Maintenance accrues against flown hours rather than the calendar, so component life reflects how hard an airframe was worked. Pilot currency is computed from the flight record rather than maintained beside it. Authorizations are held against the flights they covered, which answers the question operators are asked in an audit and one a folder of documents cannot. Occurrence reports are assembled from facts captured before anything went wrong.

The operations manual works the same way: sections restating facts held elsewhere read live from the records, and a published revision freezes as a dated document. Operators are notified when the two drift apart.

Free Tools and a Published Method

RotorLab GC, a MAVLink ground control station for multirotor, VTOL, fixed-wing, and quadplane aircraft, is free with a license key in every download. It runs on Windows and Android, supports ArduPilot and PX4, and talks to ATAK natively.

The flight log reader is also free and requires no account, reading ArduPilot .bin, MAVLink .tlog and PX4 .ulg files and returning the flight timeline, vibration, battery sag, motor outputs and autopilot warnings.

The design and analysis tools cover 16 airframe types. Every governing equation is published on a page that re-derives it in the browser and checks it against the production engine, agreeing to within 0.1 percent. A public API and OpenAPI specification are included.

Multi-Agency Operations

The RotorLab MAVLink/ATAK Bridge connects an existing ground station to a TAK server, publishing each aircraft as a MIL-STD-2525 air track over standard Cursor-on-Target. Named map markers can task an aircraft, governed by a permit switch, per-verb permissions, and a callsign allowlist. Arming and takeoff are disabled by default.

Where several agencies respond together, the RotorLab TAK Fleet Server gives every crew its own unambiguous address and records each run to an append-only, hash-chained session that can be replayed and verified.

Public Reporting

For agencies that publish their flight activity, an opt-in transparency portal releases frozen periodic snapshots rather than live aircraft positions. Where a reporting period has flights missing from it, the published version says so rather than closing the gap quietly.

Availability and Pricing

RotorLab.app is available now by subscription, with Crash Analyzer and Fleet Health priced per aircraft. The MAVLink/ATAK Bridge starts at $249 per installation with unlimited aircraft. The TAK Fleet Server is licensed annually per server and priced by consultation. The ground station, log reader, and design tools are free.

"Nothing we build can prevent a flight," Donarski said. "Not a checklist, not a lapsed certificate, not an expired license, not an unreachable server. If any of it ever blocked a launch, that would be a defect, and we would fix it as one."

About RotorLab

RotorLab builds software for organizations that design, operate, and account for unmanned aircraft: a free ground control station, free flight log analysis, airframe design tools, ATAK and TAK integration, and a system of record for flight logs, currency, maintenance, authorizations, and safety reporting. RotorLab is based in Dubuque, Iowa.

Nicholas Donarski
RotorLab.app
+1 563-500-1232
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What is RotorLab? The Physics-Based Drone Performance Calculator