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