Inspections, avionics, and a whole lot more...

This has been a busy week here at AIM AIR.  We have the DC-3T in for its avionics work as well as other inspection/maintenance, 2 Cessna 206s for inspection/maintenance, a Caravan for inspection/maintenance, another 206 which came Friday for inspection/maintenance, and then the three "projects" that are currently in progress.  Wow.  We've been spread out pretty thin, but are still getting the work done on time...great job to the guys in the hangar!  Below are some photos of the week.  

This rainbow appeared last Friday, I think.  It was a beautiful sight to see.  

I caught the King Air 200 coming in on final approach...

...so I figured I would snap a few photos.  It really is a good looking plane.

Touchdown, with the Mombasa Highway stretch of Nairobi in the background.

Jeremy Hamilton gave a hand to David Marwa, our avionics technician, with some work on 5Y-CMA.

David has really been doing a great job getting all the wiring taken care of on CMA.  Here he is getting the GPU plug attached and wired in.

An interesting shot of 5Y-CMA, with Jeremy working on some things in the cockpit for Marwa.

It's progressing!  Still lots of spaghetti, but that's to be expected for a little bit.  It's going to be another week or so until we can go back to working on CMA...there are other more pressing tasks at hand now...

...like doing inspections!  Jeremy removed the fuel reservoir tanks from 5Y-SIL and cleaned them.  These "kidney tanks" are where the main fuel tanks dump fuel to be a last holding point before the fuel passes through the fuel selector and then into the engine plumbing.  They don't often get cleaned out, but these tanks sure needed it.  We cleaned out all sorts of dirt and yucky stuff.  Safety first!

Garrett Watson (L) and Reini Schmidt (R) opening up some inspection panels on 2EA.  Garrett has been here for 2 weeks working in the shop and learning about mission aviation.

Currently we are working on N342EA, which is typically based in Entebbe, Uganda.

We have #4 and #6 cylinders off because of sticky exhaust valves.  You can see the DC-3T in the background with the avionics guy working in the nose.

Garrett and Mzee Kituo cleaning the cylinders from 2EA.

Mzee was teaching Garrett what needs to be accomplished when cleaning cylinders and repairing the valves.  The cylinders are now ready and will be installed on Monday.

Cleaning corrosion!  Everybody's favorite!  

Sheetmetal, sheetmetal, sheetmetal...

I'm sorry about not having posted in a couple weeks...things have been busy, or I just keep forgetting.  You can decide what you want it to be. :)  Anyway, here's a bit of an idea of the things we've been working on with 5Y-CMA.  Caleb and I riveted the belly skins all together, so that was nice to have completed.  Nate Killoren came down from upstairs and helped us by installing the Radio Rax, which is the new mounting for the radios.  He did a really great job and really fast, too!  Congrats to him and his wife and son as they welcome their new son/brother, Quinn!  Continuing on, our avionics guy has begun working in the airplane, installing his wire harnesses and other equipment, while we've been working on other sheetmetal projects, like some cargo tie-downs and also fabricating the new floor skins.  Thursday afternoon we began an inspection on 5Y-SIL, so that's what we'll be working on for the next week, as well as an inspection on N342EA.  Hopefully, I can get some pictures of those and you can see what happens during routine maintenance.  For now, enjoy the sheetmetal!  

Belly skins, primed and ready to go.  

We primed all the points of contact, to help prevent corrosion from growing within the lap joints.  

This was Caleb's position for about 2 or 3 days, as he shot the rivets from the outside and I bucked them on the inside.  

Teamwork is essential when shooting rivets.  Caleb and I have shot a lot together and work fairly quickly.  Notice that I'm always sporting the SP hat...gotta have the shout out!

Behold, the magic bucking bar.  This is the bucking bar that I made when I was in A&P school at Missionary Aviation Institute back in NC.  I still use it more than any other bucking bar.  

Nate Killoren and his Radio Rax.  Note the jig that holds the two Rax pieces the correct distance apart.  

It really is a detailed installation.  He did a great job.  

Doing some final touches to it.  

The finished product.  Since he's installed it, we have also painted the instrument sub-panel gray, but I don't have a picture of that yet.  

You can see that there is not a whole lot of stuff left in the airplane when we do these overhauls.  We remove it all to clean, inspect, and repair when necessary.  We have a visiting missionary aviation veteran who commented that he's never seen an airplane that stripped down before.  Wow!

A close-up of Caleb...had to make sure he wasn't sleeping down there!

Me with my freshly shaven head installing a few Cherrymax rivets...booooo!

A shot of our finally installed belly skins.  No more looking through the airplane and seeing the ground!  

Jeremy Hamilton is back with us for a few weeks and he just installed the two green cargo tie-down doublers in the picture.  It's great to have him around again.  We really enjoy the time he spends with us serving the Lord with his excellent talents.  

Don't touch my plane!  Haha, this was my "bad guy" pose...probably not that intimidating though, huh?!  

A beautiful reminder

Yesterday, we had a really good rain during the afternoon, and I saw this rainbow and had to snap a couple photos.  It was really beautiful.

This is the newest Caravan to our fleet, just returning from up north.

Some relatively non-moving aircraft.  In the back is a Shorts Skyvan which has only gone further down into the grass since I've been here in Nairobi.  Then on the right is a Cessna 210L, which a friend of ours flies regularly.  Then center and left are two Twin Commanders.  The one on the right has Garrett turbine engines on it, and the one on the left still has the piston Lycomings.  I've seen neither of them fly.