So today as I was working in the hangar, I had a few special visitors pop by.....
A pleasant surprise indeed. They caught us wrapping up the inspection on our float plane.....it's a huge Caravan on floats that normally resides in south Papua. It was a fun afternoon for a few reasons (more on that in a minute)....but it was exciting not only to have the big float plane in the hangar, but also to have a Kodiak nosed in for a little maintenance.....
So there's the float plane (Cessna Caravan) on the left, and the Kodiak on the right. The Kodiak is the plane I will be starting my flight training/check-out in here in about a month.
So a little more about that float plane, it is our only airplane here in Papua on floats (we have about a dozen total airplanes). It fills a really neat role in South Papua, based out of the city of Meraukee. The south side of Papua is very flat and wet, full of lots of large rivers, and this plane is very useful there. From time to time they take the airplane to other parts of the island to access places that have large lakes or rivers. It is neat because airstrips don't need to be constructed to land this airplane, you just have to find a big patch of water!
So while useful in lowland areas that have big rivers and lakes, it's not so useful in the mountainous areas where we do the majority of our flying. Notice it has wheels that pop out so you can land on runways too...neat ha?! I heard that just a few weeks ago this plane was used to carry some folks in to get to a community of people that is almost completely un-known to the outside world. The pilot who flew in there, Tom, has been working with us on the inspection and it was really neat to talk to him about that. Here is a picture of the float plane in action.....
The other reason it was an exciting day, is because Indonesia's import customs cleared these two Kodiaks (below) for us to use! They have been parked here for two months (since before we got here) awaiting release by the government. It can be a long process here! They looked kind of pitiful over there with the grass starting to grow long around them. So today was an exciting day....instead of sitting there, they can be put to good use. If I have the story right, these two airplanes were provided by two generous donors in the US.....each of them purchased one for MAF. Amazing! One of them will stay here, becoming our fourth Kodiak, and the other will be flown to Kalimantan Indonesia for use there.
Elise shares the excitement about the customs release! (below) The hardest part is over, but now we must get the airplanes approved as airworthy by the Indonesian government, please pray for no delays in that process.
Here's the setting of our MAF hanger here....beautiful!
Back to the Caravan on floats....we are on the tail end of the inspection, which takes about 2 weeks! Each time the plane comes in for a major inspection like this (every 2 to 3 months) there are different things that are emphasized and looked at more closely. This time it was the cabin. So all of the inside of the cabin was removed so every part of the structure can be looked over very closely. So here's the guys (including my friend Daniel on the right) putting the cabin interior back in earlier today.
