Rainy Season

Rain season is upon us here in Pucallpa. We average about 90 inches a year and as they say, when it rains it pours. Here are some shots from around the hanger during a rain storm. Note the plant/fungus growing from the rafter right by the down spout!

Cloud dancing

Another hot, humid, and sunny day in the jungle. Not quite rainy season yet so most of the puffy clouds are harmless to fly though. The only reason you wouldn't is because the "ride" can be a bumpy. Since there is pleny of sun and humidty in the jungle, as the day goes on puffy clouds billow up and shoot skyward, leaving white towers to fly around. Here is some video for today shot at 5'500 feet on the way back to Cashibo.

The glory of float plane flying.

You know, many times float plane flying is pretty glorious. I mean, who gets to take off and land on small rivers and worry about hitting logs, dugout canoes, or other floating objects during their day to day job?

However, come dry season, the game changes. Just this past week I brought a medical team to a Shipibo indian village called Caimeto, about 25 minutes away. Caimito is a lake and the water lever rises and fall just like it does in the rivers. So in dry season the lake is lower than it is during rainy season. All that to say, sometimes you run aground before getting to dry land. And sometimes you have to get wet! I had to get into the water and push the plane around for both docking and undocking.

My shoes did stay dry though as I took them off before jumping into the water. A few small kids tried to help push as well, expending more effort making faces than pushing I think...

So, here is a parting shot of the "glorious" float plane pilot, barefoot and wet from the waist down, flying back to base.

Ingenuity

Peruvian are pretty good at being ingenious. They rarely throw anything away and find unique ways to recycle and reuse things that otherwise would discarded back in the States. One example of this is with vehicle. In the city of Pucallpa, there is not a single junk yard. Granted, some of the maintenance garages LOOK like junk yards, but even the oldest beater is made to run here. Looks are definitely secondary while reliability and easy to fix are held in very high esteem.
I had some shocks that were worn out on my vehicle. One of the results of driving on a dirt and potholed road. In the states I would have to buy a complete shock assembly because the bottom rubber bushing was worn out. Here they just press the old one out, reuse the metal insert bushing, and pressing a "new" rubber bushing that is made from 3 inch thick tractor tire rubber! The price was only $3.


Around the house I have used a little of my own "ingenuity". The showers here are made for Peruvian size people and six foot tall Americans get the shower head right in the chest. So a trip the the plumbing store resulted in an ingenious modification to my shower head. Now I can actually get in UNDER the shower head. What a remarkable concept.
There was also a problem with critters entering the bathroom due to gaps between the mason work and screens. A can of spray foam (from the USA) took care of the holes!

Mazamari

Mazamari is located in a mountainous region of Peru, about 200 miles south of Pucallpa. While the scenery if beautiful to look at with many waterfalls and mile after mile of virgin jungle, the terrain can create challenges as clouds can obscure mountain peaks and haze limits visibility to 3-4 miles. One of the tools we use to avoid the cumulous granite is topographical information that is displayed on our GPS units. This is backed up with charts that have predetermined routes with known altitudes for crossing passes and entering valleys.

The day we returned to Pucallpa, the haze was thick and I had to fly half of the flight solely with reference to the flight instruments. Thankfully I had just finished some Instrument training when I was in the USA over the summer so the skills were fresh in my mind. By the way, the color GPS is so easy to use even a pilot can figure it out. The red shows terrain that is above your present altitude and the yellow is anything with in a 1000 feet below you. Dont fly in the RED and be very careful in the YELLOW.

Back in the saddle

Greetings once again from the hot and humid jungles of Peru. Since being back over the last three weeks I have been flying quite a bit. After a brief few days in Lima getting my pilot license squared away, I was able to do some recurrency training in the SAMAIR floatplane. The following week I already had three flights.
One of the flights was the pick up two missionaries that were preparing for a visit by a medical team in late September. Since there was extra room on the flight, I took along another SAM missionary who works in Pucallpa. He was surprised at how smooth the air was and at how cool and refeshing it was up at 6500 feet. 65 degrees and 140 miles per hour for one hour sure is nice compared to 95 degrees at 15 miles per hour for a whole day in a small boat!


Special thanks to Tim for the use of his pictures.

Oshkosh

One of the highlights of this past summer for me was the annual EAA (Experimental Aviation Association) fly-in and airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconson. When I am in the states, I usually try to go and the last few times have spent the whole week there. For an airplane nut there is plenty to see and do.

I had the chance to go to some aviation forums and learn about different topics that ranged from GPS units to fabric covering of airplanes. Some of my favorite things were walking the grounds talking with all the vendors, looking at airplanes, and sitting on the edge of a runway with my dad watching airplanes takeoff and land.

When I am in Peru, where there are only 50 airplanes in the whole country, I think about Oshkosh and how for one week every year over 10,000 airplanes are on location at Oshkosh. I think the only bad part of the whole week is that it ends all to quickly. But, there is always next year!

P.S. Sorry Uncle Mike, I will try better next time in my T-shirt selection.

Podcast

When I am down in Peru, riding the tractor cutting our grass runway, I usually listen to some Podcasts. For those of you who are not familiar, a Podcast is an audio program that can be downloaded from the internet or through other pod catchers such as iTunes. Anyways, I thought I would share some of the podcasts that I listen to from time to time. The first is my favorite. It is called Uncontrolled Airspace, and is about aviation. I also listen to Airspeed, Airplane Geeks, and The Pilot Flight Podlog. As you can guess, all of these are also about aviation.

However, I and a little more cultured than that so I also listen to, High Speed Stuff, 60 Minutes, This American Life, Truth For Life, Car Talk, and NPR's Technology Podcast. This is a great way to pass long hours on the tractor and keeps me reasonably up to date with things that are happening back in the USA.

If you find yourself with time to listen while you work, try some of these Podcast. You might enjoy them just like I do.