This week has seen us working on a Cessna
210 which regularly comes to us for it’s annual inspection from it’s home in
Minnesota. This plane is operated by a gentleman who retired a few years ago,
and volunteers his time and resources to Angel Flight.
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| Cessna 210 |
As you have heard me say before, you can’t
have ‘too much’ when it comes to building experience of routine service and
inspection work, so spending the week doing this kind of work is well
worthwhile! It was also a good opportunity for some multi-national operations;
working on this project we had a supervisor who was born in England then spent
many years in Zimbabwe, and 4 apprentices – one from California, one from
Missouri, one from Newcastle, et moi! The other thing that gave us an
international flavour was the back ground music for at least some of the time
while we worked. Often we will have someone playing a bit of music while we
work, but this week we tuned in to BBC Radio 2 online, and myself and Geoff had
a taste of home listening to “Steve Wright in the Afternoon”… albeit in the
morning with the 5hr time difference! It is true that instant communications
and the internet have shrunk the world, but that was really apparent to me as
we heard “Sally Traffic” telling of the tailbacks on the A82, while we worked in
the hangar here in Ohio. It made for an interesting contrast as we worked on
aircraft that are used to reach people who are just beyond the end of the road.
The last few weeks have seen me get a good
variety of experiences on aircraft big and small, all providing a service that
high speed internet just can’t. My time in Florida mostly involved working on
DC-3’s, where I spent some time on airframe repairs but more often worked on
pre-flight checklists, and phase
inspections ensuring that MFI’s aircraft are able to carry on their twice
weekly service to Haiti from the USA.
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| Matthew helping with an inspection of the landing gear on a DC-3 |
The week after my spell in Florida, I was
on a training course in North Carolina. The course was on PT-6 turbine
maintenance, and gave a good understanding of a turbine engine that will
definitely feature in the rest of my time with MAF – the Cessna Caravan which MAF operate in many of it's programmes has a PT6 turbine as it’s powerplant, so the
likelihood of working on them in the future is pretty high. The course was run
at JAARS' base at Waxhaw, where we were able to train on the demonstration turbine that was
brought in for the course, as well as seeing the turbine installed on two of
the JAARS planes that were in the hangar – a Pilatus Porter, and a Quest
Kodiak.
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| Checking out the PT-6 on a Pilatus Porter at JAARS |
Back in Ohio, my first job was to travel up
to Kidron, about an hour north of here, where MFI have one of their planes
going through a major overhaul. You might remember last year (Last Year's blog)
when I went up to Kidron for a few days to remove the engines from this plane.
Well the overhauled engines had been sent back to Ohio, so one of the jobs we
were involved in was hanging the engines back on the wings. That plane should
soon be ready to return to Florida to pick up duties on the Haiti run again.
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| Prepping the engine before we hang it back on the wing |
Since then I have been back in the hangar
working on a few different projects. First I worked on an engine monitoring
system installation on a Cessna 172 operated by Gospel Carriers International,
then I worked on re-skinning a horizontal stabilizer for a Cessna 206 that
Mission Air Group will use in central America.
That whistle-stop tour of the last month-and-a-half’s job list, brings me back to the 210’s annual, and Radio 2. It is
exciting to be able to so easily share this blog around the world with a fast
internet connection, telling you about our work. And it’s exciting to work on
aircraft that are used where the physical barriers mean that flying is the best
way to overcome them, and share the good news of the Gospel in such a practical
way.
Thank you for checking in, and for your prayers and support as we work here
in Ohio.
