La Bronca

I have worked all weekend on our "Bronca." I got some parts yesterday that I ordered on Tuesday from the States. Pretty amazing that it all worked out, and that a few car parts made it all the way here in 5 days. I ordered them from my hometown parts shop in Colorado late Tuesday afternoon, the parts store took them to Mountain View Aeromotive late Wednesday afternoon, Mountain View then mailed them next day air to some people from Ohio, the people in Ohio received them Thursday, and Friday they flew to Ecuador to visit their family members who are missionaries here in Shell. Saturday, these people came down from Quito to Shell with my parts!

Now, you want to know the ironic part? The parts I recieved are not the parts I needed, therefore they are still in the box. Rather than go into all the details of who messed up what, who cares at this point. I live in a third world country, they will come in handy some day!

Today, I was able to get my fuel system back together, and I was able to repair the "damaged" parts that I thought I would have new ones for. The fuel system works fine as far as I know, but the Bronca still won't start because my alarm is malfunctioning, cutting off power to my starter. Now my next task is to pull that piece of junk out, and reconnect everything to the state it was when it left the factory. It shouldn't be too hard, but I just don't have any more time. Maybe this coming week I can get to it, but more than likely it will be next weekend.

I am sure this week at the hangar will be busy and crazy. We already have 2 of our 4 airplanes in maintenance and no parts to fix them (they are in a Fed-Ex truck somewhere in Quito), 2 of our 4 mechanics will be gone, two of our pilots will be unable to fly, and who knows what else life will throw into the works. Needless to say, I am hoping to be part of the flying this week, but we'll see.

(By the way, thanks Ron for helping get those parts to us!)