Christmas, propellers and avionics…
Well, if anyone has been seeing my Facebook posts then you
will already know that Christmas came early (or late – depending on your
perspective) in Liberia…..
The long awaited container of tools and equipment finally
arrived….the clearing process went pretty quick and we had it delivered to the airport
about 1 1/weeks after it arrived! Of
course the timing of its arrival coincided with a busy week of maintenance, so
I had only one day to get in there and start figuring out what was what and
where things were. Fortunately it had
all been packed really well with clearly numbered boxes and a detailed packing
list so I could even find a particular piece of equipment I needed for some of
the maintenance being done the following week.
Knowing that the next week was going to be busy with maintenance, Josh
and I went to the airport on Saturday morning to continue with unpacking some
items – our aim was to get to the crate at the back that contained the Kubota
tractor that is to be our aircraft tug.
Since MAF has been in Liberia we have been reliant on other operator’s
kindness and so we are looking forward to being a bit more independent and,
being in a position to return some favours!!!
So that was Christmas…
So that was Christmas…
Then there are propellers.
Our aircrafts propeller was due to be changed. You may remember that in January I went on a
course in the US on how to assemble propellers?
Well, now it was time to put the training into practice. There were a couple issues during the
re-assembly that delayed things a little but the plane was booked to be down
for some checks on the avionics that gave me the down time needed to get the
job done.
There were also a couple of distractions of the reptile kind....as three young snakes were found around the hangar and aircraft over two days!
The avionics checks were carried out by Hannu,
an engineer with MAF in Kenya, and so he worked on those tasks while I worked
on the prop and we managed to synchronise things so that we didn’t get in each
other’s way. Hannu was also able to
repair a radio problem that had been plaguing us for a while.There were also a couple of distractions of the reptile kind....as three young snakes were found around the hangar and aircraft over two days!
