From the Logbook...Muara Joloi

Lately, I've been fixing airplanes a lot and running the office, but every once in a while they let me out to commit aviation. Above is a picture of the dock in Joloi.  Careful when crossing the log...you don't want to fall in the river!

The kids in Joloi are a lot of fun and very helpful.  They help get the airplane tied up, bring me fuel, and even load the luggage.  They also like to goof off and laugh a lot...my kind of company.

One of the things the kids have become accustomed to as we depart the dock is angin...or wind.  They love when we blast them with prop wash and a few of them have even fallen off of the dock due to the wind.  So awesome!

From the Logbook...On Call Weekend

This past weekend I was the on-call pilot and sure enough, I was called out.  What made serving a man that needed emergency heart surgery even cooler was the addition of a special passenger.  I was taking care of Number Three while Mommy and her sisters were in Jakarta for dental work.  So, she got to come with me and we had a great time together!  This was Number Three's first ride in the floatplane and the first flight with me for a long time; almost 2 years.  Can't wait till we get to fly together again!

From the Logbook...Kidney Failure

About a month ago, I was called to an interior village to pick up a woman that was experiencing kidney failure.  I was able to take one of my Tarakan colleagues with me, Ben Eadie, who took all of these pictures with my camera while I was getting things ready.

As I was getting the cabin ready for the patient and filling out paperwork, the lady in the back totally photo-bombed Ben's picture.  So funny!

It was a precarious trip to get the patient from the shore to the airplane.  Thankfully the only thing that got wet was the carriers feet.

More than one precarious crossing provided challenge for the woman's family members that brought her to the airplane.

An hour and a half after taking off, we landed near the city of Banjarmasin.  In Banjarmasin, we are only a few miles from the ocean, and the river is huge, as can be seen by the size of the barges in the background.

But river life is still river life.  There are still many small boats using traditional methods to fish.  This man was getting ready to cast his net and see what he could bring up.

This guy had luck.  I'm still amazed by how many different kinds of fish I see come out of the rivers here. 

While Ben took pictures of the local fishermen, he was also taking pictures of me and the woman's family unload her from the airplane.  We were able to get the hurting woman to an awaiting car to take her to the nearby hospital.  

Once the lady was on her way to the hospital, I spent a few minutes talking to the owner of the dock we use in Banjarmasin.  Without the co-operation of local dock owners, our work in the float-plane would be even more challenging.

Aerocet Gary

This past May, I unfortunately put a large puncture in one of our floats due to a log strike.  The puncture required a little more (or a lot more) expertise than we had to fix correctly, so we had to cry uncle and ask for help from the Aerocet factory.  About two months after the puncture happened, Gary (seen in white suit above) was finally able to show up, and a week later, we all learned a TON and our float looked amazing, as good as new!!! 

Gary was born around water, so he made himself right at home slalom water skiing the Kahayan river.  He stated he hadn't done slalom in a while, but I couldn't tell.  He was sending up huge rooster tails and generally just shredding the river.  Thanks for your help Gary!

Friday Fun Time...Rope Swing

We've talked about puting a "Tarzan" like rope from our rafters for a long time. Upon returning from a flight a while back, I found my colleagues were busy installing the nylon vine while I was gone.  Above, our night gaurd Yanto is showing his stuff.

He made it look like he had swung on such an apparatus before, quickly getting high and executing a nice dive into the river.

Our visiting friends from Tarakan quickly put the rope to use also.  Canadian Ben Eadie proved mass in a pendulum action makes for some high releases.

Paul C. from Tarakan is always game for something a little fun.  Why just plop into the river when you can do a back-flip to a dive right off the bat.  Thankfully Paul didn't hurt himself.  Years ago when he was in PalangkaRaya, he broke his hand on the zipline in my yard, seriously complicating his ability to fly...i.e, it grounded him until his hand healed.

If Ben can get high, he can get even higher if Paul joins him.  We even brought our maintenance table as well as a fueling stand on top of that to begin from at a higher point, adding to the potential energy.

They both executed back-flips like they had been practicing.  It's always fun to play with our colleagues.

Weight and Balance Time

All airplanes are required to get weighed and balanced every so often, and we are required to do it every two years.

Thankfully I had some comrades from our other MAF base in Tarakan come down to help us get our airplanes weighed.  It's a pretty simple process, but it takes a little creativity to get everything to reach the extra tall float-plane.

After all three load cells are in place, you read the numbers on the monitor, and then go do a little math to determine how much your airplane weighs and where it's center of gravity is.

From the Logbook...Lots of Patients (pt. 3 of 3) Newborn Trouble

A late afternoon call to pick up a struggling newborn is always an easy decision if the weather is still good.  Thankfully, a few weeks ago, the weather was still fine and I was able to be dispatched quickly to go pick the little baby up.

This little baby was literally just hours old, and really struggling.  So was the baby's mommy.  She was still in the village recovering from a tough and pre-mature labor.  She would have loved to accompany her newborn, but she wasn't ambulatory.

With the help of Sugianto, our awesome flight scheduler, we carried the baby up to the awaiting car where they drove away straight to the hospital.