Thursday, October 22, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
A Surprise in the Hangar...
When I was getting my first tour of the hangar side of MAF yesterday, there was a surprise I did not know I was in for. The MAF Kodiak was parked right there in the hangar.
I made a blog post about the significance of the Kodiak in March of 2008, and you can see it by scrolling down to the blog archive. I had heard that MAF already had a Kodiak delivered to them. What I did not know is that they have three, and the fourth one is on the way. So when I went into the hangar today there were two Kodiaks parked in there. What a cool sight!
I said in the March 08 post, but I want to mention it again. These are cool looking (and performing) airplanes, but that's not what excites me about them. What excites me is what they are going to do, and how effectively and efficiently these things are built to do it! Each one of these airplanes is going to impact many lives!!
So one of the two Kodiaks in the hangar is getting ready to get flown to Indonesia to begin its service. The flight over is known as a "ferry flight." What they do is put two huge cube shaped metal tanks in the cargo area and fill them with fuel, and with the fuel in those tanks as well as the airplanes normal fuel tanks, the plane has enough range to make it overseas. I thought it was really cool to see those ferry tanks installed and I tried to capture them with the camera:
From the front of the airplane:
And from the rear:
You can kind of see those tanks in there, but you can also see that HUGE cargo door! This airplane can carry somewhere around three thousand pounds of cargo. That's alot. It will carry over a ton of cargo into some of the smallest and most remote airstrips in the world
And here's a picture of the "avionics" in the airplane, or the instrument panel which is state of the art:
.
MAF is expecting its fifth Kodiak airplane soon as well, and i hear they plane to have ten by the end of next year. I had no idea they were getting so many so fast. How exciting! I knew they had 20 originally on order, but I figured that would take over a decade to fill, but they are filling it fast! God is providing for the making and sending out of these wonderful machines.
Yeah it bears a resemblance to a simple Cessna 172. It is much more capable though, with a huge side cargo door and the capability to carry over a thousand pounds of cargo. This is the type of airplane I will be doing my flight evaluation next week (and this might even be the very one!)
How is the evaluation going so far? I think it has been going really well. I honestly was much more worried about the maintenance portion of the evaluation than the flight (though I've been preparing hard for both) but I feel I have been doing much better than I have expected to do on the maintenance portion. I was worried because my maintenance training was so long ago, but i am building an even deeper respect for my school because during the test, so many things that were taught to me are coming back to me. I am also seeing the value of prayer as I have been evaluated on many specific things that I have run across and had my memory refreshed right before it popped up.
I made a blog post about the significance of the Kodiak in March of 2008, and you can see it by scrolling down to the blog archive. I had heard that MAF already had a Kodiak delivered to them. What I did not know is that they have three, and the fourth one is on the way. So when I went into the hangar today there were two Kodiaks parked in there. What a cool sight!
I said in the March 08 post, but I want to mention it again. These are cool looking (and performing) airplanes, but that's not what excites me about them. What excites me is what they are going to do, and how effectively and efficiently these things are built to do it! Each one of these airplanes is going to impact many lives!!
So one of the two Kodiaks in the hangar is getting ready to get flown to Indonesia to begin its service. The flight over is known as a "ferry flight." What they do is put two huge cube shaped metal tanks in the cargo area and fill them with fuel, and with the fuel in those tanks as well as the airplanes normal fuel tanks, the plane has enough range to make it overseas. I thought it was really cool to see those ferry tanks installed and I tried to capture them with the camera:
From the front of the airplane:
It's kind of hard to see what's really going on there, but they are two big cubical tanks that hold 200 gallons of fuel apiece.
And from the rear:
You can kind of see those tanks in there, but you can also see that HUGE cargo door! This airplane can carry somewhere around three thousand pounds of cargo. That's alot. It will carry over a ton of cargo into some of the smallest and most remote airstrips in the world
And here's a picture of the "avionics" in the airplane, or the instrument panel which is state of the art:
.
Yesterday they had the engine compartments open performing maintenance.
MAF is expecting its fifth Kodiak airplane soon as well, and i hear they plane to have ten by the end of next year. I had no idea they were getting so many so fast. How exciting! I knew they had 20 originally on order, but I figured that would take over a decade to fill, but they are filling it fast! God is providing for the making and sending out of these wonderful machines.
How do these planes compare to the ones I will probably flying right away? MAF's fleet of some 140 airplanes is made up of mostly Cessna 206's. They had a few parked in their other hangar room. Here's a look:
Yeah it bears a resemblance to a simple Cessna 172. It is much more capable though, with a huge side cargo door and the capability to carry over a thousand pounds of cargo. This is the type of airplane I will be doing my flight evaluation next week (and this might even be the very one!)
How is the evaluation going so far? I think it has been going really well. I honestly was much more worried about the maintenance portion of the evaluation than the flight (though I've been preparing hard for both) but I feel I have been doing much better than I have expected to do on the maintenance portion. I was worried because my maintenance training was so long ago, but i am building an even deeper respect for my school because during the test, so many things that were taught to me are coming back to me. I am also seeing the value of prayer as I have been evaluated on many specific things that I have run across and had my memory refreshed right before it popped up.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
A peek at MAF
We got acquainted with MAF's headquarters yesterday, and we wanted to give you a look. MAF moved their headquarters here to Nampa Idaho a few years ago. They were in Southern California, and the cost of being there drove them to seek somewhere more in-expensive. It just so happens they do alot of their advanced flight training right up here in Idaho, so they moved their headquarters to Nampa (just outside of boise). They have a cool facility, and some really cool airplanes to see there, but MAF is not about the cool buildings or about cool airplanes. They are about the lives that are changed in remote parts of the world through what they do.
Here's a look at the "hangar" building from the front, where all the planes are parked, the maintenance training and flight training takes place:
A break for now, but more about the maintenance hangar in the next post!
This is what you see when you first walk in the doors. Click on it and enlarge it, and you will see the different operations there at the headquarters.
The building is laid out "like an airplane" with two wings on either side, a middle section, and a tail that is an auditorium that serves as a lunchroom, chapple, and a rental hall for the community. Here is a view of one of the "wings."
If you walk around the wings you find many interesting things. There are many cultural artifacts around for decoration. There's also some cool airplane models. Here's a model of the new MAF Kodiak.
At the entrance they also have a neat exhibit. For those of you who know the story of the 5 missionaries who were killed in south america in 1956 this will have some significance. This airplane frame shown here (with a big print of the actual sandbar where the event happened) contains pieces of nate saint's actual airplane (the plane was in actual worse shape than this and they had to weld it together a little bit to make it look at least a little bit like an airplane) but these are the actual pieces of Nate Saints airplane recovered more than three decades after the event.
Here's a look at the "hangar" building from the front, where all the planes are parked, the maintenance training and flight training takes place:
A break for now, but more about the maintenance hangar in the next post!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)