Front office

For the pilots, here is a shot of the panel from one of the wheel planes. All three airplanes are identical, except for GPS units. Took this shot as it was the few times I'm actually on altitude and heading. =)

Mango Shooting

Cant get clay pidgeons down here in Pucallpa. So the next best thing is mangos. We have a tree in our yard so my friend Paul and I decided to just use the mangos instead! They are free, easy to throw, and give a nice juicy pop when you hit them.

Happy Passengers

Some shots of some of the passengers I fly. All very content they dont have to be travling by road or by boat. Note also the very interesting cloud pattern. Just like corn rows back in Michigan.

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.