Plenty of variety...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.