Arrival of N341EA!

Today we got to witness the arrival of N341EA, a 1984 Cessna U206G owned by Samaritan's Purse, which is coming to serve here with AIM Air.  It is going to get amphibious floats and will be based in Mwanza, Tanzania on Lake Victoria.  The guys left Ohio about 5 days ago and have pretty much flown nonstop to get here.  They arrived to a beautiful evening and non-eventful landing after like 14hrs of non-stop flight from Luxor, Egypt.  Enjoy the pictures below.

On final approach to Runway 07 at Wilson Airport.  

Final approach with the famed Carnivore Restaurant in the background.  

It sort of looks funny without a cargo pod.  

Short final.  

Touchdown!  Nice shot of the Mombasa Highway skyline in the background. 

The gang waiting at the hangar.  

I had to include a picture of the DC-3, Samaritan's Purse's other airplane here in Nairobi.  

The kids were having a blast climbing all over the tow tractor while waiting for the airplane.  

Lookin' good coming to the hangar.  

Samaritan's Purse's two airplanes at the AIM Air hangar.  The biggest one in the fleet, and then one of the smallest ones for now.  

Shutdown!  Notice the co-pilot door, which is not standard on the U206G.  It was a modification added back when this airplane was a floatplane in the States.  

Brian getting his land legs back under him.  

Dale Hamilton (L), the pilot who will be flying the airplane down in Tanzania, along with John Mosby, our Chief Engineer at AIM Air, and Jay Mundy (R), an AIM Air pilot/mechanic.  

Good lookin' airplane.  

Frontage.  

The cockpit.  It's a bit different from the earlier model 206s.  Note the circuit breaker panel on the side panel to the left of the pilot seat.  The instruments are very different layout as well.  It looks really nice.  

The ferry pilots, Brian and Dale.  They did a fantastic job.  

I like this picture.  Very artistic.  :D

Here I am opening the cowling for the first time.  

Holy smokes, what is all that stuff?!

It's an Atlantic Aero tuned induction IO-550-N with a FAT supercharger and LEES tuned exhaust.  WOW.  

AIM Air pilot Jim Streit checking out the new engine.  Notice the gleam in his eyes!

Helping unload the cargo.  

The family photo in front of the new airplane.  Of course we're sporting the Samaritan's Purse t-shirts.  Go team!

IO-520 Engine Change, Cessna 206

As I mentioned in a previous post, we did an engine change on 5Y-SIL this past week, along with some other work.  Here's the pictures/info of the engine change itself.  We took off a worn out IO-520-F and installed a freshly overhauled IO-520-F, straight from Mzee Kituo's engine shop.  It's been good so far with the few hours it has flown since then. 

I realize this isn't a part of the engine change, but we had to give the pilot a hard time for bringing the airplane in with a flat tire...this is how we found it Monday morning.  Stay away from thorns!

Prop off, working on getting lines and cables disconnected.

Caleb working on getting things disconnected. 

Brian Staples, our newest pilot here at AIM Air has joined us down in the shop for his maintenance orientation.  It was good to have him around to help with the engine change. 

Got the old engine off (the one on the right, on the red hoist) and the new one (on the left, on the yellow stand) all ready to go. 

Sounding the alarm.  This new swirly exhaust really makes some good music. :D

Remember that flat tire?  This is our tube testing unit...otherwise known as the airplane washing barrel.  Just dip the inflated tube into the water and the bubbles lead you to the hole.  I guess it's a little harder when there's not much water in the barrel!  Any idea who that guy is in the barrel?? 

Stanley (L) and Brian (R) getting things lined up. 

All installed.  It wasn't too bad to get the six bolts all lined up this time with the new dual mounts on the front. 

Prop installed.

Ready to go.  She did her engine break-in flight without any major issues and has since done a couple more flights with good results.  Praise the Lord for another solid engine overhaul and installation!

Dual Mount Installation

We just did an engine change on 5Y-SIL (that will be a future post) and as part of that engine change, we did the dual forward isolator mount kit installation.  Normally, the engine is mounted to the airframe on four engine mounts, two in the front and two in the rear.  This kit effectively takes out the two single mounts in the front and installs two double mounts, making for a total of four mounting points in the front of the engine.  It is a kit put out by Atlantic Aero under the STC# SA00796AT.  We have installed this kit in all of our 206s and the 210, and SIL was the last aircraft to get the installation.  Hope you enjoy the pictures below. 

The engine compartment in SIL is painted white, so the first thing we did in preparation was to paint the new mounts white to match.  On the left is Marko, doing a great job painting while I am looking on.  Please notice that, in a pinch, when you can't find your respirator, ear plugs work well enough for a quick look at the job.  :D

The old single mounts.

And...they're gone. 

Pretty grungy looking, huh?

Fitting the new mounts.  It's a pretty simple installation...but perhaps I'm a little biased since I've done like five of them. 

Close up of the new RH mount.  Notice the silver flange at the bottom left of the mount.  I fabricated new doublers down in that area to help distribute the load more evenly. 

This was the newly fabricated doubler on the inside of the nose tunnel.  The mounts attach on those vertical rows of rivets.  The fabricated doublers on the inside and outside were to help distribute the load more evenly.  The old doublers were a lot smaller, because the old mounts were half the size. 

The newly installed doublers (the gold things) inside the nose tunnel. 

And the newly installed dual forward isolator mounts. 

Stanley on the left and me on the right.  Stanley is an intern here at AIM AIR and helped me with the installation.  He did a great job and the job went pretty smoothly.  I'm happy with it! 



New paint on the floor...

...of 5Y-CMA!  We've been prepping the floor of CMA so that we can go ahead and paint dark gray that is the 206 fleet standard.  Today, we finally got done cleaning it all, so we decided this afternoon to go ahead and paint it.  We're gonna let it sit for a week or so and get nice and dry, then we'll install the seat tracks back into it and keep on working on the airplane in the mean time.  Hope you enjoy the pictures.