From the logbook...Volcanoes

Being that I am flight coordinating this week, I haven't flown much. But, I was able to make a once in a lifetime flight today. These are the kind of out of the ordinary flights that as a pilot you try to store away so that you always remember them. You may have read some of my posts describing our volcano flying. There are a group of vulcanologists that like to fly with us to take thermal pictures of the active volcanoes in Ecuador. They asked for a flight and I was able to do it. Lets just say it was AWESOME! As you will see below the scenery was nothing short of spectacular. Several times during my flight I had to remind myself that this was my job. How cool!Here is the tallest point on planet Earth. This is Chimborazo volcano. The funny cloud that is seen midway up the summit is an ash cloud from nearby Tungurahua.

Here is Sangay. It is active right now as well and after seeing the top we discovered there are 3 craters right now that are active in the cone. To top Sangay we climbed to 20,000 feet. Yes, the window of the airplane is fully open, and yes it was cold. But, it was worth the view.

Here is El Altar in all of her gleaming majesty. The pure white color of El Altar was stunning. As I have written before, experts think that this may have been the tallest mountain in the world, dwarfing even Everest, before it blew it's top a long time ago. Now the only thing in it is a gorgeous lake.

Here we are circling overhead Tungurahua volcano at 18,500 feet. It has been very active lately, and during our flight it was belching smoke and ash like an old wood stove on steroids. Very cool!

This is Cotopaxi on the left and Antisana on the right. At the moment these are both dormant volcanoes, but they make for great photos. We were en route to Tungurahua when I took this pic.

This volcano was the whole reason for the flight. It was the lowest of all the volcanoes we saw today at around 11,500 feet. Reventador is HIGHLY active right now and even has some flowing lava streams running down it. I was flying under a cloud deck when we were at Reventador so I had to be careful with the whole terrain/weather combo.

Here you can get a glimpse of the scope of the volcanoes in Ecuador. Their base may start in the jungle and climb right up through several climactic zones until the summit. This is another perspective of Antisana. Beautiful!

Flight Command

This week I am on coordinating duties. Probably means I won't fly much, but the way the schedule looks nobody is going to be flying much. Looking forward to Friday we will be slammed with flights, but between here and there, we are pretty light. I may do a post maintenance flight with Alas 10 today, but that is about it.

This past weekend we also welcomed back some of our teammates. If you remember when we first arrived in Ecuador we were house sitting for an MAF couple that went to help in Suriname. After almost a year and a half they finally came back. After a few days of settling back in they will probably be back into the swing of things.

We (MAF-Ecuador)just got a new car. We have had MAF cars in the past, but recently a man came to visit us and heard of our need to buy a car. He basically said "OK, lets go by it." So, a few weeks later we have a brand new van that staff can use for Quito trips, vacations, airport shuttles, etc. We were and still are very grateful for the generosity of this man.

I began to update my photo albums this weekend for those of you who look. I had to back up photos and I had 8 Cd's worth of photos to store. It took a while, as is my updating to the web album, but by the end of the week I should be done.

From the logbook...weather delays

Today we had a full flight schedule but bad weather. It seems typical that right after I get done blogging about how great the weather has been we have a poor day. We didn't start setting off for our flights until just before 3:00pm. I had time for only a short flight, and luckily there was a large hole right over my destination through the clouds because the jungle was covered in a 1000ft thick blanket of clouds, with about a 400-500ft. ceiling beneath.Here the 3 of us are all lined up like toy soldiers getting ready to blast off for a days work in about 2-3 hours time.
On my way home I decided to fly under the clouds instead of climbing above them. My flight home was short, about 20 minutes, and I knew the weather underneath was fine since I had just come from that direction. The bridge in this picture is spanned over the Pastaza River and connects the provinces of Pastaza (where we live) to Morona Santiago to the south. When we arrived here a year and a half ago, this bridge was nearing completion, and has since been finished.

Various...

• Plenty to write about this week, just not the energy. If figured I would just highlight a few of the latest happenings.
• Our visitor from Africa had to leave yesterday afternoon. He should be somewhere over the Atlantic right now on his way back to Zambia. Happy traveling Nate!
• Our air ambulance contract was finally paid in full after more than 7 months. We are beginning to fly for emergencies again, but with caution.
• I have been busy flying this week. Today I was moving a government medical team. Yesterday it was taking a huge work team of 25 people to help improve an airstrip.
• We have had great weather lately. In fact, many of our airstrips have dust on them. You don't see much dust in the jungle.

• I took this sunrise the other morning as I was getting my coffee ready.

Pailón de Diablo

Yesterday we had a great time visiting Pailón de Diablo, a waterfall about a 35 minute drive from our house. We had previously hiked into this waterfall when we first got here just over a year ago. Yesterday was one of the nicest days I have seen in a long time, so it was fitting that we were outside enjoying the fresh air.

FAA Cerified

It's finally FAA certified. The Quest Kodiak received it's official stamp of approval from the FAA earlier this week. While I don't know when, where, etc. as to when my first chance at flying one of these will be, I do know that our program in Kalimantan, Indonesia is slated to get the first one the first part of next year. Lucky fellas!

Happenins'

• I was working a lot out of my toolbox instead of the cockpit this week. This week we needed to put new rings on Alas 14's pistons. We started Wednesday and I finished yesterday with the test flight in the afternoon. Everything seemed to check out fine, and 14 is now back on the flight line.
• Last night we had 2 other MAF families over for dinner. It is always fun to get together with them and have some good laughs.
• Today our visitor, Brooklyn, and I are going to go to a waterfall up the road. It should be a good time, and the weather looks great!
• We got robbed again the other day. I hate robbery! We had recently planted some flowers in the planters of the entrance to our house. A few mornings later as I walked out to work, I realized someone had reached through our fence and pulled some of our new stuff right up by the roots. While loosing a few flowers is no big deal, the violation that comes as a result of being robbed on any level, whether it is a flower or a car, is infuriating to me.
  
• Speaking of walking to work, I have walked a lot this week because my faithful bike is temporarily out of commission. While riding home last week for lunch, my tire suddenly blew up. So, I finished my trip home by walking and later inspection revealed the wire bead of the tire coming apart. It is an easy fix, I just need to get a new tire, but I haven't had time to go to the bike shop.
  

Oops!

For the past week or so the army has been conducting a lot of exercises. They have included hauling weird things slung beneath their helicopters, bombs and explosives going off shaking all the windows in Shell, men repelling out of helicopters, and a lot of para jumpers. The funny thing about the parachuters is that they are simply jumping out about 1000 feet above the ground with unstearable chutes. They are being dropped over the runway and then are at the mercy of where mother nature takes them. As you can see below this guy was taken to an interesting place. I was later told that they have even landed in power lines and been killed. Doesn't sound like any fun to me.

From the logbook...Back in command

I was put back into the flight schedule today before I jump back into the maintenance side of things again later this week. It was a lot of fun, but very tiring as well. I had 4.7 hours of flight time, 9 landings, and1 instrument approach back into Shell.

Most of my flights had me going to Tiweano (TIW) today to bring out a work team of 20 people that went in last week. By the time I had made my 4 flights into TIW and another pilot made one, the airstrip was becoming hard to operate in. TIW is notorious for being awful when wet, or after a rain, and we definitely had that today.

During my third trip into TIW it began to rain shortly after I landed. You can tell by the tire tracks that it was beginning to look like a cattle drive had just gone through. If you saw a picture of me, you would think I was one of the cattle because I came home pretty muddy today.
Here is looking north as I waited for the rain to pass. About 10-15 minutes later it had subsided leaving me and the airstrip really wet.

One of the kids in TIW caught this neat butterfly. I had never seen this type, so of course I took a picture. It is amazing how many different kinds of butterflies there are in the jungle.

Up the road...

As Becca mentioned in her blog we went up the mountain yesterday to the town of Baños. I always enjoy going there, as the people, land, weather, etc. are so different than what we are used to in Shell. As the crow flies Baños is only about 30 miles away, or about a 50 minute drive. The topography never disappoints, and the Andes Mountains are always so fun to look at. Both of these pictures are taken from the same spot. The one above looking east towards lowering terrain and Shell, the one below looking west towards Baños towards rising terrain. Note how the picture above is slowly becoming jungly and the picture below is loosing it's jungle look for more of a typical Andean grassland. We always enjoy the various zones of flora that we drive through as we drive up or down in elevation here in Ecuador.

Gremlins...

Last week when I returned from Quito to work (that was the 5th of July) I was asked to help with some issues with our new engine on Alas 10. Really long story short, over a week later and without any success in diagnosing the problem exactly, we decided to pull the engine that has only 75 hours on it and put another new engine in it's place. Our need for airplanes because of high demand and other future maintenance on Alas 14 negated that we do this engine change. We still have some very probable ideas to look into, but in order to prove them wrong or right we had to pull the engine off of the airplane anyhow, so why not put another engine on Alas 10 in the meantime.

Yesterday morning we had the engine off of Alas 10 by 10:00am and the new one set back in by 12:30pm. After lunch we came back and finished hooking everything up and just before 5pm we started the engine. Our pre-flight engine tests went very well, and if the weather holds up today, Alas 10 will be airborne for an engine break-in test flight. I don't think our mechanics had ever seen an engine change in one day. I knew we could do it if we didn't have any significant unknowns.

I have been absolutely fried when I have come home this week. I have had plenty to share and show, but lack of energy to post it. The brainpower and problem solving that we put into figuring out this problem revealed a mind that isn't accustomed to thinking like this. It has been a long time since I have been involved at this level of maintenance and diagnosis. Several times we even had to cry "uncle" and call MAF headquarters and another special guy that I know that happens to know something about airplanes and their powerplants.

I have been asked to stay in the maintenance side of things next week as well to help get Alas 14 in and out. It has been burning about a quart of oil an hour so we are going to put new rings on the pistons. This should take a maximum of 3 days for us. Assuming all things go well with Alas 10 and 14, we are going to open up the engine we pulled off of 10 and see if we can find something wrong. Then, after that, probably the end of next week, I will be put back on the flight line and see if I can still land an airplane.

Beauty in the sky

This evening things really cleared up and the sky and mountains were crystal clear. It is always a joy to have such clarity in the weather, because it never lasts for very long. Living on the equator we don't have sunsets that are very good, but tonight the colors in the sky were very striking. I know not everyone has interest in the created world, but I am continually in awe of the art that God makes every moment of every day in the ordinary mundane around us. Whether it is something like a sunset or the way light glimmers off of leaves, I feel God does this almost as a gift to us. He doesn't need to do it to impress himself, he is trying to capture our attention and admiration.

From the logbook...on call weekend

This weekend was a light day for flying. I had to go to one place called Cuyacocha (CUY) to pick up a government medical team and then bring them back to Shell. I was done by mid morning. We have had great weather lately which also helps flights to get done quickly. This was my first time into CUY, and because of that, I didn't take the kid staying at our house with me. I had room, but I don't like to be a test pilot when I don't have to be. That is to say, I don't want to go into a new, technical airstrip and be at the maximum possible takeoff weight and hope it all works out okay. Having been in there now, I would take off with more weight than what I came out of there with, which will help me next time as I decide what goes and what stays.
This is the aerial view of CUY. Because of the dry conditions we have had lately, the brakes actually did something when I landed. It has been nice to have the airstrips be in "decent' condition although we all know it is temporary.


There was more nakedness than what is "typical" in CUY. The medical team was there to help get a dengue fever epidemic under control.

Quito trip

This past Sunday we made our way to Quito for a few reasons...

• I had to get my flight medical. These are done yearly, and I passed. It is a very different process than I am used to in the States.
• Brooklyn had a dentist appointment
• We picked up a kid from Zambia, Africa. He wants to be a missionary pilot when he gets older and has always wanted to visit the famous Shell, Ecuador mission community. His parents are missionaries also. He is staying with us for the next few weeks.

Because of the huge landslid that wiped out our normal route to Quito we took the alternate route. Let me just say awful is an understatement. The road was so bad that when we got to Quito I found out that my front bumper was barely hanging on. Who knows what else will need tightened up.

We returned yesterday via the "normal' route. Praise God is was open! The land slide was so huge, the simply made a road out of it, and now we just drive over it and back onto the paved road.

Today at the hangar I was helping chase maintenance gremlins all day. I have to admit they won, but tomorrow I am going to win, and get Alas 10 flying again!

La Basílica

We had one free afternoon to do some touring in Quito earlier this week. We have always wanted to make it to La Basílica, an early 1900's Catholic cathedral. We had a great time and were in awe of the construction, and the heights. We were able to climb into the one of the towers in the front, and also the one in the rear. While I felt they were safe, my legs still felt a little uneasy at times.

More later...

We are back from Quito, tired, lots of news, lots of pictures, no energy...will write more later.

ps-happy 4th of July!!!

A view from the front patio

The electricity was off all day today so we spent a lot of time out on the front patio of our house. From there you can see our front yard and the street. It is always interesting even after a year of living here in Ecuador to see what passes by on our street and who lives next to us and across the way.
One thing that does take us by surprise after living here a year is the poverty we live right next door to. It doesn't take long to become "comfortable" with your surroundings and forget that the people living literally next door don't have everything you have, and they probably never will. This house is right across the street from ours.

This is a shot of some of our oranges coming into season. We have 3 citrus trees in our front yard, a lemon tree, a lime tree, and an orange tree. The fruit that is produced is still not the quality that we are used to, but it is fun for a bunch of Coloradoans to have some fruit grown in their yard. About the only thing we had growing up was rhubarb growing in the yard.

This little finch has a nest in our orange tree. I'm pretty sure it is the parent of the young birds that fell out of the nest a few weeks ago that Becca tried to save and Maya licked to death.

Tomorrow we are also going to Quito in order to get my flight medical done. We are coming back Wednesday, so we might be a while before our next blog. Also, we are leaving early in the morning because the main road to Quito was washed away with a landslide last week. It might be interesting taking "the other way..."

This is a shot of the closed road from a Quito flight we had today. You can see how the slide covered about 300 meters of the road. It is literally tons of material that needs to be moved and blasted away. It might be a few more days until it is fixed, or a few months...you never know.

From the logbook...Southbound

I only had 1 flight today of about 2.5 hours with 7 landings. My main goal was to pick up a medical team from the local hospital from a community called Kaan (KAN). This community is way down south, very close to the border of Peru. A unique thing about this strip is that it lays within the Cutucú mountain chain. This is a small cordillera that runs north to south in the jungle. The terrain is very rugged, and very beautiful. I had decent (although not great) weather, which made for a fun day. Flying in the mountains and over ridges and through valleys was a lot of fun, and a lot more demanding than the usual flatlands of the jungle.

One of the missionaries that I picked up took this group picture of us. I have been told that I stand out, do you think it is my hat? Overall, the community of KAN seemed really nice and not out just to get a handout.
While it is always hard to convey the ruggedness of things like terrain through pictures, this is a bit of what it looked like on my way home from KAN. There were waterfalls everywhere, and stunning gorges and rivers. I can't wait until I am sent down in that neck of the woods again. It was a fun day.

From the logbook...Way out there two

Today I had a lot of flight time (4.6hrs) but not many landings. With that much time in the cockpit I would usually have 14+ landings instead of 5. I went back to Cononaco Bameno (CNC) today to bring out the group that we took in yesterday. We had two flights in there yesterday, but I was only one of them. Today, I flew out there twice to bring out the Compassion International team. We had good weather (PTL!) all day, which makes flights like these a lot less stressful.

Because I flew so far away, I also flew higher. Because of the altitude, I was able to see rivers and communities from a new perspective. This is the Conambo River. It sure looks like it is going to crawl away.

From the logbook...Way out there

Today, I went to a new airstrip for me called Cononaco Bameno (CNC). We don't fly to many places that are much farther than CNC, at just over an hour from Shell. CNC is a Huarani village and is a little more "authentic" than other villages. Because of it's distance and isolation I speculate that all the influences of the western world haven't taken hold...yet. But, as you will see below, there are some things from our world that are just to ironic that have made it to the middle of no where.
Very often when we land, as pilots, we are asked various things. A common request is help with a radio. Sometimes it is simple to fix, other times it is over my head, like today. Because I couldn't fix the radio, I just brought it back to Shell and hopefully it will be fixed soon. The reason I put the above picture on the blog is the irony of the sticker that is on it. I couldn't believe that a Wal-Mart sticker made it all the way out into the Amazon jungle, I'm talking way out into the jungle. The human footprint and the places we travel and make trade are intriguing to me.

These are the guys that I helped with the radio. The guy in the white tank top told me he was just in NYC for an international conference for something. I wonder if all the people he met realized how far away and isolated he really lives. The fella on the far right is a small example of some of the old traditions. Although he has a shirt on, he's not wearing much else. He is wrapped in a type of loin cloth. The women of the village were a little more "natural" than I am used to as well.

Nearby where I stopped the airplane grew these pretty flowers. This particular type grow everywhere, but these were some of the nicest I have seen. The bugs crawling on it were pretty unique as well.

From the logbook...Graduation Day

Yesterday we all had a full day, and it started off with flying 4 of our 5 airplanes to Copataza (CPZ) for a high school graduation. It was fun to all be in one place together as pilots, and to see the graduation, and the similarities and differences compared to an American graduation. Around 20 kids graduated, most from different communities. There were only 3 girls in the whole thing, which shows that prejudices still exist with educating women among the jungle cultures.

Published again

A week or so again I casually submitted a photo to an Internet aviation news company called AVweb. They have a weekly photo contest, and I was selected to be a part after last weeks submission. Although I didn't win the "blue ribbon" maybe some day I will if I keep trying. Click here if you want to see the website and photos.

From the logbook...maintenance

Back a few years ago as I was working as a mechanic in training, I knew all the hard days were going to be worth something... someday. Today was a classic example of why MAF requires that their pilots are also mechanics. Although I haven't done a lot of maintenance since arriving in Ecuador, I have used my mechanical knowledge and problem solving a lot.

During my pre-flight today (I was really excited to go flying after a week of coordinating) I noticed a funny sound as I turned the propeller backwards. We do this 6 times to check for compression in all 6 of the cylinders. I felt compression in all 6 cylinders, but one of them was letting out air, with a shwooshing type sound. After taking off the engine cowling and a few pieces of baffling, I turned the prop again, this time having squirted the cylinder with soapy water. Sure enough, bubbles started foaming out like crazy indicating a crack, and I knew my hopes for flying today were dashed.

So, we pushed Alas 13 to the maintenance end of the hangar and begin pulling the jug to get another one on. Tomorrow is a big day of flying, and the goal was to get 13 back on line today. By 2:00pm with the help of one of our mechanics, I had the engine ready to start back up. It was gratifying to do something more extensive than the usual little fixes that I do. The fact that it all came back to me, and I could do it with efficiency and speed were also pluses.

We all went and had lunch together before I started the engine. We wanted to take a break and come back to the engine and see what we had missed after our brains were nourished. After a positive ground runup, I took 13 flying for a while and still everything worked fine. Tomorrow, 13 will be back on the flight line and working hard.

This is what the inside of a typical airplane cylinder looks like. The two empty holes are where the spark plugs go. The smaller circle on the left is the exhaust valve, and the larger one on the right is the intake valve. You can easily see the crack between the two black lines I made. Thankfully, this was caught on the ground. I think this jug was about to split in half.

Aves Exoticas

For a while now we have seen this sign advertising aves exoticas, or exotic birds. We finally set off yesterday to see what it was. While it is a far cry from a zoo, we still had a fun time. Also, when it only cost us $2 to get in, how can you complain. This place had a lot of VERY neat birds. They were all in cages of different sizes, and therefore all of my photos in the slideshow below are taken through a cage. Brooklyn had a good time as well, and it is always fun to see her reaction to things like this that she sees on tv or in magazines.

Hangar Happenings...

I haven't written much this week because we have once again been plagued by bad weather and I am coordinating flights. It has been a fight to get any flights done, and they seem to just keep piling up. We have collectively flown less than 50 hours this month because of the weather, which is very low.

One of the exciting things today was the show the hangar boa's put on. They haven't eaten since March, so we thought it might be time to throw a chicken or two in, and let them eat. Sorry if this kind of thing grosses you out (mom) but it's just nature doing what God designed it to do.
Sheba, our big snake, is always a patient eater. He/she? never attacks quickly like Maximo. I wonder if the snake thinks that "it has been a long time since any food came around and I'm going to enjoy it."


Here, our smaller snake, Maximo, doesn't ever wait to get things going on his/her? meal. The chicken was quickly in the death grip, and dead within seconds.



Here is how things look a few minutes later when they are almost down the hatch. As things would have it, Maximo actually ate both chickens by accident. So, we will have to do something in the future for Sheba, at least in the next few months.

Around the hangar

Today we found a fun find in the hangar when we were cleaning around some things. This scorpion was very facinating, and the first one I have ever seen in real life. This particular species gets a lot bigger, as this one is a "baby." It's hard to take pictures of things like this, but it was still fun.

Murcielego!

Today I saw a little black thing in the corner of the hangar. After I looked at it closer, I learned it was a murcielego, or bat, a vampire bat at that. Of course I took some photos. I don't have much of a fondness for bats, although like all things in God's creation, they are extraordinary non the less.

At the beach...

Yesterday afternoon in our boredom we decided to go for a drive. This is a common hobby for us, and therefore we find some neat spots. Not far from Shell I took a side road that led us the the banks of the Pastaza River. We had never been up close and personal with this river. We had always viewed it from a distance, a nearby road, an airplane, etc. We were quickly stunned by how huge this river is as you stand on it's banks. The rapids were huge, and you could hear boulders the size of small cars slamming into each other under the water. It was a fun time, and best of all, we had it all to ourselves. Our dog could run around without being bothered or being a bother, Brooklyn had her fill of sandbox playing, and I got to explore and take pictures. It was a fun time. We are sure to go back, especially since it is so close to home.

Camping trip

Last night we had a great time eating dinner with a few of our MAF families at a nearby home. On our walk home, we all noticed the stars out. I cannot remember the last time I saw the stars out that clearly here in the jungle. So, I decided that me and Brooklyn should go "camping" when we got home. I have been wanting to do this since we arrived in Ecuador. I use the term camping loosely. What we really did, was set up our tent on the roof, and slept in it. Obviously with concrete as our ground surface, there is no way to put in tent stakes, which is what holds my rain fly on. Luckily, we didn't have any rain last night, and we both had a good time.

Sean, ve por alla!

When I got back from my first flight yesterday and was unloading my cargo, one of our pilots said, "Sean, ve por alla" or "Sean, look over there." As I turned around and looked toward the runway a C206 from our neighbor was landing and had a blowout. His airplane quickly went sideways and stopped. All told, Shell was a great place to have this happen. He even got stopped right in front of his ramp. We loaned them a tire and wheel assembly that we always have ready and they were off the runway in about 10 minutes. I don't know why the tire blew, but I'm sure the places we all fly, and the type of surfaces that we encounter had something to do with it.

From the logbook...

After waiting until almost 11am yesterday, we finally had good weather, and it just kept getting better as the day went on. I made two flights, my first to a "new to me" airstrip called Sarayacu (SAR) in which I was taking a government medical team. Click here if you want to see the SAR official website. I won't venture out to say much about SAR other than it seems like a spiritually dark place. Many years ago missionaries were based there, and now I honestly don't know a lot about the Christian community that exists. The landing and takeoff in SAR were challenging as well. The whole length of the airstrip was covered in water due to all the rain we have had. I think I would have faired better if I was flying a float plane.

For my second flight I flew a 55 gallon barrel of gas to Mashient with some other cargoes and then I went back to Cumai to pick up a missionary that is building a home there. This particular guy and his wife used to work for MAF, he as a pilot/mechanic like myself. They are from Finland (I think) and are great people. It has been fun to get to know him. They currently live in Quito, and travel into the jungle with us building their home where they hope to base and help the community of Cumai.

As I was getting ready to load in Cumai, I asked if I could get a group picture. I am rarely turned down. You can tell looking behind the airplane that there is a cliff. This cliff drops about 200 feet down to the Pastaza River below. We have many airstrips like this, and it gives an effect similar to an aircraft carrier on landing (not that I have ever landed on a real aircraft carrier, I'm speculating here). In other words...it is fun!

From the logbook...Finally

I haven't posted much lately because there hasn't been a whole lot to say. We have been having awful weather. I have had flights to do every day this week, but I was only able to accomplish a short one yesterday afternoon, and today it took me all day to day what would typically take half a day. While I was in and out of the clouds a lot today, and even waiting out weather on the ground in my various stops, I did have a good time.

At my last stop of Mashient, I was there about an hour waiting for the weather to improve in Shell. Meanwhile, one of the villagers (the pastor) and I went hiking a bit through the trails in the community. When we came out I had two banana plants to bring home. Becca and I have been wanting to plant some bananas, and now I officially have two plants in our backyard. It will probably be about a year until they bear fruit, but they will be fun to watch grow in the process.

Below is a small slideshow of today's activities...

Saturday Hike...

Today we were able to go on a GREAT hike about 45 minutes drive away into the jungle to reach a waterfall called Hola Vida...hello life. Becca does a better job of giving details of what we did and the pictures therein at her blog. I wanted to post a few of the nature shots of things we saw.First and foremost, here is the shot of the waterfall. It had a drop of maybe 80 feet. While we have seen a LOT bigger here, the setting was unmatched. Shortly after we arrived we had the place to ourselves. It was great to just be in the middle of nowhere and be awestruck by God's creation.

Dragonflies were everywhere. This is the only one I was fast enough to capture on film. At one time, Becca and I saw the largest dragonfly we had ever seen. It looked like a Chinook helicopter. I tried to gets its pic, but he was too elusive.
This is one of the dozens of species of butterfly that we say. I was amazed by how many butterflies there were. I like how you can see the thorax through the clear wings on this one.
This little guy is a little out of focus, but he has a pretty color scheme none the less.

We did see another creature that I wish I could have got a picture of. As we were walking out from the waterfall to the car (about a 40 minute hike) I saw a huge snake. I don't know what kind it was, other than it was totally black, about 4 feet long, and skinny. I don't know if it was poisonous, but he did turn tail and he fled to the underbrush like most any wild animal would.

From the logbook...

• I finished my 6 month check yesterday. I am happy to report that everything went really well. As with most things like this, I still have things that I can improve on and get better at, but overall our instructor pilot liked what he saw.
• I was also able to complete my instrument flight approval during my 6 month check. Now, I am MAF approved to fly in instrument (clouds) conditions. This should help a lot in my day to day operational flying.
  
• Today we had horrible weather again until late afternoon. So, we had to scrub flights and reorganize others with the time we had left. I went to Makuma and took the bible translators home that I pulled out of the jungle earlier this week. After that, I had some various passengers that I flew home nearby. I also brought out a man that had chopped his ear off with a machete. I didn't ask how it happened.
• Speaking of air ambulance, thanks for joining us in prayer with our situation with them. We did receive some payment this week from AA, but it is hardly sufficient, and their account is still seriously in the red. In other words, we aren't going to change how we are handling emergencies until the account is paid in full. Please keep joining us in prayer about this.
• Below is a pic of the folks in Yuvientza, my second stop. I asked if I could take their pic as a group, and they all seemed pretty excited about that. The blue sky in the background was the only sky like that that I saw today. This was also looking towards the border with Peru. If you were to look 180 degrees the opposite way towards Shell, you would see that yes, we have had crumby weather and Sean isn't always making it up.

From the logbook...Jungle yard sale

Once again today we had to wait for the weather to get better before we could launch and get something done. It was lunch time when our instructor pilot and I set off for our planned stops. I am still in process of completing my 6 month check and should be done tomorrow.

We went into an airstrip today that was new to me called Bufeo (BUF). The people seemed nice and friendly and happy to see us. The airstrip itself is one of our shortest (370 meters) and a one way in and out landing/takeoff.

I had to take this picture because it made me laugh as I was preparing to takeoff. The words on the building say "vendo algunas cosas" which translated means "I'm selling some things." While it may not appear very funny to most of my readers, you have to understand the way things work in the jungle. To see something as unspecific as some guy selling somethings in the middle of the jungle made me laugh. I'm sure whatever he had to sell was one or two things, that perhaps to us would appear worthless.

From the logbook...

Today was a light day on the flight schedule. It was a good thing, because I waited until 3:30 to set out on my first flight. My original flight was to long to do once the weather became operable, so we put something smaller together and set off. I was flying with our instructor pilot to begin the flying portion of my 6 month check. We only had 2 stops. Our first was to Iñaywa (INY) to drop off some cargo. This community is also receiving supplies to "plumb" the village with water just like the communities of Yuvientza and Paandin that I have written about also.

After landing in INY these 3 little kids made for a good picture. The grass was getting a little long, and you can see how the community had begun cutting it just behind where the kids are standing.

After INY we flew 8 minutes to Makuma, where we picked up some awaiting Bible translators that need to run some errands for a few days in the "civilized" world. To get back into Shell we "shot" the instrument approach due to low clouds and landed shortly after 5:30.

It was a lot of fun to be back in the cockpit after a week of coordinating. It is a great job that I have (although very hard sometimes) and the views are always good from my office!

Weekend

We haven't done a whole lot this weekend. We have been able to get a lot of odds and ends done around the house, which always seem to get put on the backburner in our busy life. Late this afternoon I did go for a short bike ride in which I passed by one of our local attractions...


This is what the locals call the dique, or dike. They basically put a small dam on the local Pindu River and made a small recreation area out of it. It is very well done, and looks really fun. On a nice day like we had today, it gets pretty full of people. I want to go swimming in it, but the local hospital has advised us not to. Periodically they run lab tests on the water, and they always come back very foul, mostly with human waste. So, I don't think I will be dipping in the dique anytime soon, but it is still fun to swing by there from time to time to see what is happening.

Weekend flying

These past few days at the hangar have been a bit hectic to say the least. Due to many things outside of our control, our fleet was grounded from Wednesday through Friday morning. Because of this things really backed up on us. In order to help alleviate some of the backlog, I volunteered to come in today and do one flight, even though it isn't my weekend to be on call. I had room to bring along Brooklyn which was great, because she bugs me on almost a daily basis asking me to go flying. It was fun that it worked out. But, wouldn't you know it, our flight didn't work out as planned. En route to our destinations, we began to fly over a layer of clouds, which quickly became solid. I was flying above them, but there wasn't a hole anywhere to descend through. So, we flew 50 minutes out over the jungle and then turned around came back to Shell. I told our passengers that we will give er' a try again on Monday.

I took this pic in flight. It turned out pretty funny, esp. the look on my passengers faces. It's like they are thinking "Man, we got the crazy pilot today. He doesn't even have his hands on the controls and he is always taking pictures.

Volcano flights

Recently, we got a contract with a government agency to do what we call volcano flights. Of the volcanoes in Ecuador, 3 are highly active. We are talking about 3 highly active volcanoes in a country the size of my home state of Colorado. We have an airplane based in Quito right now, and it is being flown by one of our pilots that lives there to do these flights. The group he is flying are using special thermal imaging cameras to take pictures as well. They said they will make us a disk of their photos. I will be sure to share those if they indeed share some stuff with us. Our Quito pilot brought back some neat pictures from one of his recent flights this past week. It is good to realize these were taken from 23,000 feet with the window open. Can you say Brrrrr?!

This is Tungurahua. It is always emmiting at least an ash cloud at the present time.

This is Sangay as seen from 23,000 feet. There is snow on it still, but it is on the east face. This view is taken from the western face. Notice all of the fumeroles steaming from the top. There isn't a defined crater in Sangay, meaning it might create one at any moment from one of the many steaming vents.


Here you can see El Altar, and Sangay. El Altar is the one that has the snow on it, and directly behind it is Sangay, looking like a big snowcone. Althought the picture doesn't show it, Tungurahua would be right out the front window of the airplane.

The other volcano that is active is called Reventador. It has been shrouded in clouds for a long time, and the volcano crew haven't been able to get any pictures of it yet.