Andy and Heather Swanson

When Heather posted our last blog and said that it would be the last one for a while, a bit of me thought that I might get a chance to blog again from Scotland while we were home… I should’ve known that we would be so busy we would have no chance of writing blog posts!

We had a great trip back over to Scotland for the best part of October – we flew into Glasgow on 13th October, then spent the next fortnight driving about 850 miles, with another 800ish on the sleeper train. We slept in 5 different homes (and the sleeper train!), shared at three Sunday morning services, one midweek meeting, and held a Saturday morning presentation and lunch in a coffee shop. We got ourselves up to date with the dentist’s and the optician’s. We got our fix of Scottish food and enjoyed a bit of Chinese and Indian foods as well!
We were also able to catch up with lots of our friends and family, which was incredibly encouraging for us. Thank you all!! It was a real shame that we just didn’t have enough time to catch up with everyone we wanted to – if we didn’t make it round to you we are sorry.
The main reason for being back this year was to renew our visas. We are here on a vocational student’s visa, with a one year validity period, so every autumn will see a trip back to the UK. The visa interview went without problems, and despite my not being able to follow the instructions on photo’s for the kids visa applications, our visa’s were renewed and we were able to return home to Ohio as planned! After finishing at the American embassy around lunchtime, we had lots of time for a bit of sightseeing in London before our train back north.

Big Ben!!

Our trip back home didn’t go quite to plan. When we arrived to check in at Glasgow airport, we were told that our connection to Columbus had already been cancelled. They managed to book us on a later flight on Saturday night, and off we went to New York. By the time we arrived in Newark, the East coast was caught in the teeth of the first winter storm of the season – a whole 1.3” of slushy snow had fallen, and the airport had ground to a halt! After finding out about our 2nd cancellation of the day, we were able to rebook to fly to Columbus on Sunday morning. We were fortunate enough to find a hotel room to stay in for the night, and all four of us had a great night’s sleep! It probably worked out for the best, as the only option we really had was to go to sleep at 7:30pm – had we been able to get home on Saturday, we would have likely been up too late unpacking, and Sunday would have been spent like Zombies!
Monday morning had us all getting back to normal, with Heather and Matthew running errands around the town, Abi back at school catching up with her friends, and me back in the hangar. It was good to be back at work, and getting my hands dirty again.

While we have been away, the Gabon 207 had a few teething problems as it was being prepared for its Return to service flight, and the FAA gave an 11th hour approval for an HF radio installation which has been pending for a while. The problems have all been straightened out now, and Mike, Phil and Jim are busy working on the radio system. Hopefully it will be back on it’s way to Africa soon, although from a purely selfish point of view, I am glad I will be around to see it’s first flight since arriving in Ohio, having spent so much of this year working on it!

The Gospel Carrier Internation Cessna 172 I am currently working on, in front of the Gabon 207.

This week, I have been helping on an annual inspection on GCI's cessna 172. Yesterday we were overhauling the nose landing gear strut, and today we removed one of the main landing gear wheels for inspection, and to clean and re-grease the bearing.

When we were back in Scotland it was good to be able to show a short video clip of the work I am involved in here in Ohio. Just in case you didn’t see the clip while we were in the UK, here it is!