Its been a busy few months for us, getting
our heads around life in Africa, setting up home in a new country and settling
into our places in the MAF Uganda programme. All good and exciting stuff, but I
have to admit I am appreciating having a week off this week, before the kids
get started at their new school! We are trying to mix some fun family stuff with
some of the things on the long DIY list! On Monday we spent the day at a
Kampala hotel resort, where we were able to take the kids for their first horse
rides (or at least, their first rides that were in a straight line rather than
round and round a pen at the Coshocton county fair ground!). We then spent the
rest of the day by the pool. Unfortunately we were joined by a thunder storm
which kind of changed our plans a bit, but we are Scottish, and warm rain is
summer rain!! J
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| Eilidh getting ready to go, while Matthew sorts his straps out! |
We are planning a trip to the Entebbe zoo
later in the week, and hopefully by the weekend we’ll be well through the jobs
list too!!
Things in the hangar have been busy as
well. The diesel 182 arrived in Kajjansi with a list of jobs to ready it for
its role in S Sudan. I spent quite a bit of time working my way through the
list, installing an HF radio, refuelling steps and handles, folding rear seats
and a V-brace between the door posts and the glare-shield in front of the pilot.
I am enjoying getting involved in these modification type projects – right up
my street! J
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| Looking back at the new HF radio installation past the new folding seats! |
When our friends Nicky and Jane were over
they were able to join a flight on one of MAF’s Karamoja shuttle runs, and they
were quite excited to find out that they were flying in “Scotty”, a Cessna
Caravan that was bought by MAF following a fund raising project by MAF-Scotland.
The Scottish connection added a nice little link for Nicky and Jane, and Nicky
especially was extra excited because of the particular plane he was flying in!
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| Nicky and Jane take off on Scotty's last flight for a while. |
The day after Nicky and Jane flew in Scotty, she came into the hangar for maintenance. We took her engine off, and sent it out to be replaced with the newly overhauled engine that had just came back to us.
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| Scotty, missing an important bit at the front! |
As well as an engine change, Scotty is due to have an avionics upgrade to a “glass panel” system which will bring it more in line with the some of the more modern avionics systems available today. MAF are working their way through most of the fleet, upgrading the older systems to Garmin units. It is quite a task and involves a fair amount of sheet metal / structural work as well as the actual avionics installation itself. Mat, an avionics engineer from MAF-Australia is looking after all the avionics side, while I have been busy preparing for the physical installation of everything onto the plane. Unfortunately we are still waiting for the proper approvals to go through the Ugandan CAA’s system, but I have been able to do lots of preparation work off the aircraft which should make things much quicker and smoother when the approvals do come through.
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| Checking out the work ahead of me with the avionics upgrade. |
Thanks again for all your thoughts and
prayers as we serve with MAF here in Uganda.
