Summer or Spring?

The weather is heating up and it's great to meet more of our neighbours. After being here for six months and hardly seeing anyone outside, I was beginning to think there were no other children in the neighbourhood. It turns out there are lots, particularly young teens. As there are no fences on the gardens (yards!) young people just walk anywhere they want getting from A to B. Last night we had a large group of teenage girls singing happy birthday at the top of their voices taking a stroll through our yard past our house! : 0) I enjoyed cooking for a few MMS families last night and it was great to set some tables up outside under the shade and enjoy fellowship together.

A few weeks ago myself and the kids took a trip to North Carolina for a friends birthday party and had a super time. There were gator rides, horses and goats to pet, milking to see, baby Robert to play with, a little bouncy castle, and friends for Abi and Matthew to play with - we all had a great time. Meanwhile back in Ohio Andy got some time to fix the fuel tank on his jeep (he can now put more than $10 of gas in without it leaking) and Paul Jones took him flying. He got a great aerial picture of our house. Yes, we do have a large garden which has it's pros and cons. The weekly mowing has been proving very time consuming. Even with both of us doing it, it takes about three whole evenings. and in four days it needs done again! Then there is the slopes and ditches around the edges that need to be trimmed. I have never seen grass grow so fast! Our landlords had a ride on mower which they took away when we moved in. Last weekend we went on the trail for a second hand ride on and managed to get one -old but working! What a huge difference! Andy can do the grass in a few hours, and the trimming to keep the ditches clear in a few hours also - he is beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel for study time now over the summer.

Last weekend we were invited to a birthday party for Lucy who was 1 year old. Her parents , Ben and Caroline are the newest additions to MMS. They have moved from Missouri where recent tornadoes have killed over a hundred people. Thankfully their families back home where all safe but there was a worrying moment when they couldn't get hold of Caroline's parents due to the phone line chaos in Missouri. It was 90 degrees F and when we arrived at the party I could see this big bonfire. I thought they must be burning some rubbish etc. but no - it was purely for toasting hot dogs and marshmallows! This was definitely the first time I had ever done this in such heat! While the Scots were stewing the Americans still felt it was a "little Chilly!"LOL!

Abi has been to dancing weekly since November last year and her special show is on June the 4th at 2pm. I think the highlight may have shifted however to the father and daughter part of the show! There has been two rehearsals for this and Andy and Abi will be showing the world their moves along with other dad's and their daughters. He really will do anything for his little girl! I can't wait to see it and will definitely be armed with the video camera!

Matthew is doing well yet continues to be my biggest motherhood challenge. I am reading James Dobson's book on the Strong Willed Child and this has been so helpful. I have found someone (the author) who understands what it is like to have a child that continually wants to push boundaries, and how to cope without crushing his personality. In the book he talks about a comparison between two shopping trolleys - one which just glides down the isles, you only need one finger to push it and you get all your shopping done in minutes and are oh so happy at the end of it - the other you realise it has a mind of it's own, the wheels are stiff and it is a nightmare to push and the whole shopping trip takes hours, you are exhausted at the end of it and you dread the next trip. The latter shopping experience I can relate to often (and this "shopping experience" refers to many experiences out with shops) and it is just nice to hear someone say that it is not my parenting as a mother but just the fact I have a child with a very strong will. I do thank God for his character as I know it is shaping mine, hopefully in a good way. Maybe this will encourage any other mother's reading this who are suffering from daily "battle fatigue" and feel like the only one! chin up! : 0)

On the 6th of June I will be off to Columbus airport to pick up Gary, Johanne and Iona Smith from Scotland who are coming to the USA for three weeks! Then on the 9th of June I will be back again picking up more Scots - Sarah from Moodiesburn and my neice Kirsten. : 0) Sarah will be staying a month and Kirsten, two months. Please pray for safe travels for all! We are so excited have everyone coming to visit. I hope we can all handle the Summer heat!

Standing on her own three legs... almost!

Well it has been quite a while since my last blog post, but it is certainly not because nothing has been happening at the hangar! Heather wrote a post the other week, but for some reason it disappeared into the web about a day after it arrived, so we will see how long this one lasts!

Those of you who get our newsletter will be familiar with the “Gabon 207”, a Cessna 207 air ambulance that was seriously damaged in an accident last year. It was shipped from Gabon to Ohio, arriving about the same time as we did, and as of a month and a half ago, I have been working full time on this project. A project as large and involved as this has to be approached with a bit of strategy, and Dale Coates, the supervisor in charge, has a simple but effective one… start at the front and work backwards, one job at a time! Since I arrived in Hanger C the engine bay area has been completely rebuilt and repainted, the engine reinstalled, the fuel system removed, tested and reinstalled, the nose landing gear removed, rebuilt and reinstalled and a damaged wing sent to a specialist to be rebuilt on a jig.

The engine bay area all prepped and ready for painting.


Moving aft, the next job was to remove the main landing gear legs, and gearbox assembly. The legs themselves were relatively straight forward to take out, but the gearbox was installed by Cessna when the plane rolled out of the factory, and it didn’t think too much of our plans to bring it back into the daylight! Quite a few man-hours went into removing hundreds of screws and rivets, then doing a lot of very technical “wiggling” to get the gearbox out of it’s home in the belly of the plane.

Josh removing one of the more awkward rivets from the gearbox assembly.


The gearbox is made up on 3 bulkheads which sandwich the four aluminium castings through which the gear legs are installed. When the plane had it’s accident, the right hand landing gear leg was one of the parts of the plane that took a big impact. The gear leg acted as a lever, pivoting on one of the castings and leaving a nice big kink in the forward bulkhead(see the pic above!) This bulkhead was damaged way beyond repair and a new replacement part was ordered up for reassembly. The other bulkheads and the 4 castings were tested by an external specialist to confirm they had not been damaged, and once this was confirmed we were able to put them back into the plane. As with most work on older aircraft, doing one job often exposes another hidden job, and this was no exception! In the process of removing the gearbox we discovered some corrosion and other damage in the right hand side door sill. This was removed and a replacement part ordered up.

Trial fit of gearbox; you can see the 4 castings, 3 bulkheads and

the holes where the gear legs are mounted.


When I first started on this project Josh and Paul were also working here in Hangar C, but they are now over in Zambia on a Rapid Response trip, so the “207 team” is now just myself and Dale. This is great for giving me opportunities to be fully immersed in learning new skills on a real project with real deadlines (believe it or not we hope to have this project flying in Africa by autumn this year!). It has been good to get lots of opportunity to work on riveting technique – it is one thing riveting 2 little squares of 0.0025” aluminium together whilst holding it in a bench vise (see http://andy-heather-swanson.blogspot.com/2011/01/started-at-mms.html), but doing it upside down underneath a plane is quite a bit different!

Working on the rivet holes running the full width of the plane


Another of the highlights this month has been spending a day getting a bit of an introduction to the paint booth with Josh. It is definitely art as much as science, but the bits I painted are still painted so I am taking that as a good start! I don’t know if it is a coincidence that my first painting experiences were on parts that will hopefully not be seen by too many eyes for quite some time!

First "proper" painting experiences...

Newly installed door sill


As I write this, we have just completed refitting the new door sill, and today we made a repair to the other door sill in anticipation of refitting floor skins next week. We had hoped we would have the plane sitting on it’s own 3 wheels again by now, but the aircraft is built like a large and complicated jigsaw, and we are taking plenty of time to make sure we do everything in the correct order before moving on to the next job.
Thank you for your interest in what we are doing out here, and for your support and prayers that make it possible.
Andy