Been busy...

Hey, guys. Sorry I don't have any new pictures up on the blog. I've been a little busy lately as you can see. This is my new little girl, Ruth Amelia. We're so proud to welcome her into our little family. Dinah and John just love her to pieces. Thanks for all your prayers, all went well and we're headed home today. I will get some pictures of those other things...airplanes, yeah, that's it. :)

Just a few

Here's just a few pictures from the project and around the hangar. Not much visual stuff happened as we were letting the fuselage dry and getting some work done on the interior of the wings. This week should bring blue stripes and trim and some more work on the wings...oh, yeah, and a new baby. :) For those of you who don't know, we're planning a C-section on Thursday the 25th for our baby girl. So the latter part of the week I won't be around. I'll make sure that someone else is there to take pictures for me. Anyway, here's some pictures.



Waldo checking out some antennae locations. Don't touch the paint!

Work being done on the wings so they can be painted this week.

Some of the dispatch guys (and Edward, hangar security).

Not really a picture of AIM Air, but a neat picture anyway. That's a Kenya Police helicopter flying past the hangar. They like to fly their big helicopter up and down Langata Road and over Kibera and over Wilson Airport...like their showing off or something. Whatever.

Paint time!

So this week has sort of been devoted to major painting. You can see by the pictures that a lot of preparation went into preparing the fuselage for paint, as well as the paint process.






Steve Moffit of AIM Air Radio Base doing his powder coating magic on the new instrument panel.

Ding! Panel's done! We don't call him the Moffit Muffin Man for no reason.

Chris doing some last minute prep work on the belly of the fuselage to get ready for paint.

Jose Reyes, the resident painter of AIM Air, spraying primer on the fuselage earlier this morning.

Jose spraying the second coat of white paint this afternoon.

This was more a funny picture than anything else. It looks like Marco (left) is throwing a fireball at Jose (right) who, in turn, is shooting back towards Marco. In reality, it is Marco holding the light for Jose while he's painting white.

Getting ready to paint

Well, we're getting closer to some real eye-opening progress on N827DG. This is the type of progress that people can really see, even if they don't have a clue what else is going on. We got a lot of parts and pieces painted this week and some of the major fuselage work done. This week will hold more painting; the fuselage the beginning of the week and maybe the wings by the end of the week. While all of that is going on, work on N4790U has commenced, with a thorough cleaning of the fuselage. After this, paint stripping of the wings, control surfaces, etc. and then on to the major work that...we...just...did...on...N827DG. Sigh. Deja vu or something like that. Oh, well. These two planes will hopefully be the twins of the AIM Air fleet. All the other ones have small differences, whether it be interior paint, exterior paint, equipment list, etc. These two planes both being rebuilt in such a compact period, they will hopefully be as close as twins. Keep up with the blog and hopefully you can see the progress. N4790U will soon be getting as much attention as N827DG. Keep your eyes open. Things are really happening.





Hey, where are the planes?

There they are! Out front for baths. N4790U is on the left getting its first real cleaning and N827DG is on the right getting its pre-paint cleaning. Etch, alodine, and then sitting to dry over the weekend to get ready for primer and paint this week.

New gadget

For those of you who read this and want to do this...

I put the new "Followers" gadget on the sidebar (I called it "Interested Persons"). This is a little thing where you can sort of register or something like that. If you want the blog to show that you are a reader of PROJECT 206, then you can do whatever you're supposed to do to become one of the "Followers."

Anyway...

So far this week...

Getting some of the instrument panel back together...who doesn't like pushing knobs and levers?!

Installing a new tail skid.

New windows installed and JAARS safety kits installed. The JAARS shoulder harness points and cargo tie down points are the light gray brackets throughout the fuselage.

Hey, it's a V-brace! The V-brace is really part of the 206 floatplane conversion, but we install them for added fuselage strength. The glareshield (dashboard) had been painted black as well, getting ready for windshield installation.

And now the installation of the windshield...well, maybe this was like the 4th try. Stupid windshield....ggrrrr.

And finally for today...don't steal my stool.

Steps forward

We made some good progress this week on 7DG. Sorry I don't have more pictures. Some of the work was not really that "picture worthy." We finished the installation of the engine (after much stress on my part) and modified the cowlings to fit around the new engine. The JAARS shoulder harness and cargo tie-down kits were started and some of the work around the instrument panel was done. Next week should have some better pictures and lots more visual progress, especially as we are moving toward getting the fuselage painted. Once that happens...this silver bullet will be no more; the white bird will be emerging.

Anyway...here's some pictures.



Our Piston Fleet Supervisor, Ryan Williams, doing a diagnostics test on the new engine.

I made that little sheetmetal box in the center console (below the black, blue, and orange handles) for the wing tip tank fuel gauges, switches, and fuses. That was fun and exciting.

Mzee Stephen Kituo during our cowl fit session. We had to check how much modification we needed to do to the cowls and Mzee was helping us. "Mzee" is a title for an older, respected man.

Wow, that's a snug fit. That's good, though; it helps with better air flow which helps cool the engine and run for efficiently. This installation is ultimately going to save AIM Air lots of money on fuel costs. Rock on!