Medical Evacuation from a ranch?

Over the past two weeks, I have had the chance to accompany the other SAMAIR pilot on five flights. The last one was quite interesting as we received a call from the owner of a cattle ranch to come and pickup his elderly wife who had fallen and hurt her hip quite severely. The ranch was only 55 miles away from the SAMAIR airstrip, but the idea of riding for 3 hours on rough roads between the city and the ranch made flying the best transportation option. Like many of the ranches around Santa Cruz, this ranch has a 1,800 foot airstrip which made for easy transport between the house and the airplane.

While we were at the ranch, I took a few pictures of the ranch house architecture and a tree that had very large thorns growing on it. Both were strange sights for someone who is used to flying in the jungles of Peru.

The owners of the ranch are originally from England, 27 years ago they came for a short visit and never left! One of the ranch hands, along with his son, came to help load up the wheel chair and bags inside of the Cessna 206.

Thirty minutes after takeoff, we were back in Santa Cruz where the couple was whisked away to the hospital. I am thankful for the opportunity to use something I enjoy (flying), to serve people in such a tangible way.

Bolivia

Greetings from Bolivia! I have been in country for almost one week and am finally getting some things under control. My first taste of Bolivia was walking off the plane in Santa Cruz, my new home, and being greeted by winds of 40 miles per hour and a temperature of 50 degrees! Evidently a southern cold front, from Antarctica, had arrived just before me and brought with with rain, wind, and cold air. This phenomenon of a "sur" happens occasionally during the "winter" down here and lasts for about 3-4 days. Since I was hot and sticky at the hanger today, I officially pronounced the "sur" to have ended.

Speaking of the hanger, I wasted no time in showing up for work on Monday. I have already had the chance to go on 3 flights and am beginning to get "checked out" on some of the flight routes and airstrips. I guess I have been to busy flying because I was only able to take a few pictures of the SAMAIR hanger before an early morning flight. Stay tuned for more pictures and updates coming shortly.

June Jobs Jaunts and Jingles

June was a crazy month. I received information from the mission that plans for going to Bolivia would be moving a head. Basically this meant extending a one week vacation that I had planned in the USA for the last week of June and staying through the first week of August so I could spend time with family, friends, and supporters before heading straight to Bolivia.

Before leaving Peru I did have the change to work on a few more projects. The floatplane was looking a little worn out since we had finished working on the wheel plane. So I took a few days to do some 'wish list" things that the pilots has wanted to get done. I installed some headphone jacks for the middle and rear seat passengers. That involved some wiring and soldering.

Then it was on to an new engine gauge that had been donated by Electronics International. That also took some wiring and a few hours on my back behind the instrument panel getting all cramped and calling into question the genealogy of some engineers at Cessna. In the end it turned out very nice. Here are the BEFORE and AFTER shots.

A finishing touch was standardizing the Push-To-Talk radio switch and Flap Dump (retracts the flaps after landing) switch locations on the control yoke.

During this whole process the old Cessna boat anchor (aka Nav-0-matic 300 autopilot) was removed as well. We gained 4 more pounds of useful load!

My fellow pilots Nathan has begun his wheel plane checkout and standardization flying. I was able to shoot some pictures and even get a neat video shot as well from my motorcycle.

Since I will be taking over for another pilot in Bolivia for 12-16 months, I ended up selling quite a few things that I had at my house. A fellow missionary came over to help me make deliveries which was much appreciated. As poetic justice would have it, I sold my trusty Honda generator to my neighbor and the very next day after I left, the power went out. He wrote me saying it was the best purchase he made all year!

Traveling to the USA was an adventure, 23 hours without sleep and changed flight schedules had me spending hours on end in both the Miami and Chicago airports.

But, once I was back in Michigan I had the joy of being in my cousin's wedding.

I should be in the USA until the first week on August... then it will be time to change the to blog to SPEYERS IN BOLIVIA!

It flies!

After installing the final screw and completing the last inspection on our Cessna 206 aircraft, we pronounced the project DONE on May 20th!

Well, then we went and weighed the airplane, did more paperwork and tried to find the Registration and Airworthiness certificates that we misplaced!

The first flight went very well. There were no major squawks from the Chief Pilot, a testament to the care and diligence of the mechanics and everyone else involved in the project. OB-1671 is back to serving the missionaries to and peoples of Peru!

Hail to the Victors!

Being from Michigan, I have a large portion of Michigan related clothing. The most impressive though is my collection of MICHIGAN t-shirts. Most of these are gifts from my aunt and uncle who live in Michigan and keep we well supplied. In case you are wondering, VAMOS AZUL means GO BLUE in Spanish... I get a lot of weird looks when I wear that one, but such is the price for supporting the Maze and Blue!

Flaps, bolts, and grinders?

For those of you who wonder what makes the flaps go up and down on small airplanes, here is a picture of the flap motor and transmission assembly. The electric motor provides the force and the transmission converts the spinning motion of the motor into horizontal movement which pushes the flaps either up or down.

Here is a picture of one of three bolts which connects the wing to the airplane. This one happens to be installed backwards which puts the tail of the bolt and the nut to close to control cables!

After turning the bolt around this is the end you should see, the head of the bolt.

But if the tail of a bolt is to long and gets in the way of things like the flap follow-up cable, you can take a grinder and cut it off.

But sometimes its the other kind of heads, the goofy ones, that you have to worry about the most!

New Paint!

The project Cessna 206 has new paint! We have painted it to look like our other wheel plane so that as we blaze through the skies at 140 miles per hour out planes will be a blur of white and red!

It came out really well without any runs in the paint. I leaned that in Spanish the work for "paint run" is a word the use that means "curtain". Which is pretty accurate!

Now if we could just get people to take their job seriously and get back to work we would be done soon!

Three wheeled tractor

In the spirit of the 3 wheeled motocars which are so prevalent here in Pucallpa. I took some pictures of our three wheeled Massey Ferguson tractor. This the work horse that keeps our runways and taxi ways mowed.

Unfortunately there were were brakes on the left side so stopping was getting pretty exciting. Its back in service as of this blog post. Although now the PTO (power take off) clutch is not releasing... that means splinting the tractor in half to get at that thing. Anybody know a good tractor mechanic that wants to come down and work on it?