May 30-June 8, 2006

I have been wanting to blog a bit more about my recent ferry flight for the past week but it seems I am just now getting around to it. This past week I have been very busy, although I feel like I don't have much to account for it. So anyway, I am going to give a brief "play-by-play" of my 10 day trip. Pour another cup of tea, this turned into a long one...

• Tuesday, May 30: I rode the bus from Shell to Quito and stayed the night at the MAF apartment. Very fun trip on the bus with Loren Holland who's parents used to serve here in Ecuador and now they serve in Afganistan with MAF.
• Wednesday, May 31: I woke up at 4:00 am to catch my 7:00 flight for Miami, Dallas, and then my final destination of Wichita, Kansas. All my flights went well, and I was even stupid enough to forget to put my leatherman in my checked baggage and they "had to confiscate" it in Miami. DOH! When I finally arrived in Wichita at around 5 in the evening after about 10 hours of traveling, my bags were lost, but at least my boss Dan wasn't, as he was waiting at the airport with the rental car to pick me up. He had just finished driving in from Iowa where his family lives. He and his family were stateside to attend his fathers funeral a few days before. We then drove about an hour north to Hesston, Ks where we stayed the night.
• Thursday, June 1: We (Dan and I) started early as we needed to pick up my lost bags in Wichita, return the rental car in Newton, and then pack our little Cessna 206 in Moundridge, Ks. After it was all said and done, we finally went airborn at around 12:00pm bound for McAllen, Tx. Big thanks to Circle K for a nice lunch in a sack. Man, I sure did miss the fine eating of America. (Kidding...) After some "scud running" through Texas we finally made it to McAllen around 8:30 that evening. Once we were on the ground we still could not rest. It wasn't until about 11:30pm that we finally turned out the lights. We was pooped!
• Friday, June 2: After a continental breakfast at the hotel we turned in our flight plan and were airborn by around 9:00am for Oaxaca (Wahaka), Mexico. Once again, we were blessed to bring along a 99 cent heart attack from the local convenience store for our lunch and snacks along the way. Mmmmm! That day's flight was mostly a non-event. The weather was pretty good, the views awesome, and no problems to speak of. We landed in Oaxaca at around 4:00pm with plenty of daylight to spare. We stayed the night with our MAF Mexico teammates that have a base there.
• Saturday, June 3: We were airborn at around 8:30am after a good breakfast of juevos racheros. Our destination was San José, Costa Rica after a fuel stop in Tapachula, Mexico. Well, we landed in Tapachula and got gas, but during our engine runup just before takeoff, we found we had engine trouble. Rather than go into all the details of what it was and why, just read the archived blog posting from that date. Needless to say, we were sad to have to stay in Tapachula and not keep flying, although Tapachula is a very nice city.
• Sunday, June 4: Due to the weekend and a bunch of other tough breaks, our airplane parts would not arrive today. So we went to the mall, watched a movie (Poisedon) and just walked around town. Pretty boring actually.
• Monday, June 5: At around 12:00pm we finally got word that our parts had arrived "near" Tapachula and a few hours later we had them in hand and installed them on the airplane. Everything worked great, but we still had to wait until Tuesday to depart since there wasn't enough time left in the day to fly anywhere.
• Tuesday, June 6: Finally at around 8:30am we were airborn again after a 3 day mechanical delay, which would have taken about 1 hour to fix had we been somewhere with a few parts and tools. Although our destination had been San José a few days before, we now thought it best to press on to Panama City, Panama afte stopping in San José for fuel. This was a very eventful day. We were in the "soup" most of the day and I even got to shoot 2 instrument approaches. After about 7 hours of flying we finally arrived into Panama City, just to find that we had more mechanical problems, but by then everyone had gone home for the day and we had to wait until Wednesday to fix them.
• Wednesday, June 7: We were at the airport at first light to get a handle on our mechanical problems. Long story short, we had more problems than we previously thought the night before, but we got them all fixed and we were airborn for Quito, Ecuador by around 11:30am. This leg was nonstop and very long. After fighting a lot of weather and finally climbing to 16,000 feet, we were able to shoot the instrument approach into Quito and we landed just before 5:00pm. The fact that we got this particular airplane to 16,000ft.was a miracle in itself. It doesn't have a turbocharger like all of our other airplanes in Ecuador, and the manual says it will only go to 14,800ft. If we couldn't have made it to 16,000ft. we would have been sleeping somewhere else besides Quito, because that is the minimum altitude that you can fly that route through the Andes Moutains and stay safe while in the clouds, which we were in.
• Thursay, June 8: At 8:00am I boarded what would be the first of 3 buses to Shell. I was home, finally, by around 2:00pm. We have to leave the "new" airplane in Quito until we can finalize the import and re-registration paperwork.

As I stated before, this is and was a flight I will never forget and I would love to do another one, although Rebecca and Brooklyn might protest. Below is a rough sketch of our flight path. We flew almost 3,000 nautical miles in just under 27 hours. Needless to say my rear end was sore for a while. What was supposed to be a 4 day flight turned into an epic 8 day quest. Thanks again to all of you who pray for us not only for these kind of flights, but for the "routine" flights that we make everyday. Keep it up!