Grandma and Grandpa Lundholm

Elise got to meet Grandma and Grandpa Lundholm yesterday!  Elise was very excited (so was Grandma and Grandpa).  We're used to calling them "Dad and Penny" but I suppose now we call them Grandma and Grandpa!

Dad and Penny drove into Nampa last night from St. George, Utah where they live.  We're going to hang out with them all weekend and let Elise spend some good time with them.  We'll go see what Boise has to offer today and tomorrow and they will head back home Monday.

The word from Doug, the MAF mechanic that tested me last week was that I passed the mechanic portion of the evaluation.  What a relief!  I was definitely more worried about the Mechanic part of the test than the flight.  However, I know I can't take the flight for granted and I will try to prepare just as hard.  One thing I really liked was how much I just enjoyed doing the evaluation.  Doing the projects they gave me helped me to dust off and refine so much of what I've learned, and Doug has the heart of a teacher and he taught me so much.  What a good, enjoyable and challenging week!

Some difficult news came through two days ago.  Ron Royce, The flight instructor that I flew with in Tennessee last month died in a plane crash on Thursday along with the student he was training.  He was doing a training project just like the one we did with him almost exactly a month ago.  His student, like me was on his way to evaluate with a mission organization and him and his wife and two kids stayed in the same cabin that Heather and I stayed in while we were there.  Ron was an instructor with Moody Aviation in Tennessee and he instructed probably more than half the pilots here at MAF.  There are a lot of people that are sad to hear the news around here.  Ron was an incredibe guy.  Two things came through to me besides the fact that he was an un-believable flight instructor.  He was a very funny and light-hearted guy, and he cared about people intensely.  I was impressed that as I was training with him at Elizabethon airport, you could tell he knew and cared about the employees at the airport.   He introduced me to the janitor who he knew really well.  Also while I was preflighting the airplane one morning, Ron was talking with a young guy he had given training, and I looked over and Ron had him in a head-lock.  Ron was a fun guy and a teaser (he was seventy years old!).  He did something funny the first day I met him.  I know there is this code of conduct where you usually don't joke around too much with someone you first meet.  The first day I flew with him when I was saying goodbye for the day I reached out my hand to shake his and he made me miss his hand, I tried a few times and he kept doing it.  He said "Just testing the reflexes."  He did that every time and I'm not sure I ever actually shook his hand (well maybe when we said goodbye the last time).  Ron asked me to let him know when I was going to MAF and he would pray for us at the evaluation.  I emailed him monday night and he emailed right back and let me know he and his wife wold be praying for us and he is looking forward to hearing a report.  Now Ron is with the Lord!   I think the last thing he said to me was "Well, I'll see you later, but probably not in this troubled place!"  Now he is there with his Lord, and I imagine maybe he's doing the hand-shake thing with God or who knows whatever else kind of funny things he does.  He will be greatly missed by many and he lived a very rich life.

A couple cute videos!

Something Cute!

Elise got to try out a tricycle for the first time today!

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:

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:



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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.