Hangar Happenings

Life continues to be really busy due to the inspection of MCB (see post below).  We have removed the floats and their attaching components, cleaned up lots of corrosion, replaced both landing gear brackets, etched and alodined all aluminum parts and applied lots of fresh paint.  This type of major inspection happens every 1000 hours and poor ol' MCB has over 22,000 hours on her.  She needed this inspection bad.  This coming week we should be able to complete the inspection barring we don't find anything else that slows us down.  This inspection has turned out to be heavier than we thought and we have called "all hands on deck" to assist.  Thankfully we have great national employees.  Due to the fact that our hands are so full with this inspection, we have cancelled all flights except emergencies in order to get it done.  

I am still not flying due to some "new" laws here in Indonesia.  It seems like my licensing reputation has followed me to Borneo.  Long story short, within the next week or so I will travel to the other MAF base in Borneo so I can get certified first in a land plane, a Cessna 206; then I will return and take another test to fly the Cessna 185 floatplane.  It looks like it will be the end of June now before all of this happens and I will be legal to fly solo in Indonesia.  

We were visited by another MAF airplane last week; a Cessna 208 Caravan.  Our 208 is based at the other location I will be visiting soon.  One of our pilots from that base flew 400 nautical miles to pick up my instructor pilot and his family since they are moving there to take up a leadership role.