Mark and Sarah Newnham

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…

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.