From the Logbook...Backwards Patient

We provide a fair amount of medical flights.  Usually, we are called to rush to a village and bring said patient to the nearest medical care.  Unfortunately, not all medical type flights are full of much hope.

A few months ago, we were asked to take a gentleman back to his home village where he could spend the rest of his few remaining days.  He had already been hospitalized in our city, and after months of medication, the was no longer anything else the doctors could do to eliminate his bone cancer.

Despite the tough circumstances surrounding this flight, we were honored to be able to serve this man and his family through this difficult experience.

Unloading the patient and his family was a little interesting in this village.  I couldn't find a good dock to use, so I tied up the airplane to some floating rubber.  The rubber is taken from the sap of rubber trees and then it is molded into "bales" and floated down to market and sold for industrial uses.  Let me just say that it doesn't support the weight of a big westerner very well!  It's not uncommon for me to get wet feet at some point during the day.  Ah, the life of a float plane pilot!  It's awesome.!

Big Welding Project

As we've made preparations for the soon to be coming Kodiak on Aerocet floats, we realized we also needed to re-enforce a few areas on our hangar structure.  Since we will be hoisting the Kodiak in and out of the water, the hangar engineer felt safer if we had some metal pieces welded into a few strategic places.  Because of the importance of these welds, we actually had some experts come and do the welding for us from our home office in the USA.

We had to get creative to get the welders into the hard to reach spot over the water.  We ended up using a small bridge and hoisting it up with the airplane hoist.

It looked a little funny, but it was actually well thought out and safe.  And don't worry, the guys were actually wearing safety harnesses, should they fall.

After the major structure welds were done, we had some extra time to build a battery cart as well.  The battery cart is important for many reasons with a turbine equipped airplane.

Not only did we make a sweet battery cart, but the knowledge to do so was also left behind, providing the fuel for many more projects in the future.

After we had made all of the various pieces of the cart, we put some paint on it and reassembled it.  It turned out really nice.  Now we just need an airplane to plug it into!  Hopefully it will be here by years end.

From the Logbook...Naan from Above

Several months ago found me needing to land in the village of Tumbang Naan, and our other airplane was already there.  This takes a little coordination because our docks aren't always big enough to accommodate more than one airplane at a time.  Can you see the airplane in the photo above?

As I circled overhead the river, I was looking for many things; debris, river current speed, where I'm going to park, how I'm going to "un-park," and any other obstructions that might pose a hazard to safety.  The river looks wide in thh pictures...trust me, it's not when you are going 60 MPH!

We played musical airplanes and MCB departed the dock and I was moved to the front of the dock, flying MCD.

A few minutes later, MCB was taking off, making a bunch of spray and noise and she gained speed in order to fly.  Float planes are so cool!