This week. A short week.

So this week was a short week. Friday is Moi Day, so that means a national holiday. Daniel Arap Moi was one of the past presidents of Kenya. Hey, I've never met him, but if he gets his own holiday, he must be pretty important. Anyway, here's some pictures of this week and the work we got done. I will have some pictures to post next week of the newly painted fuselage of 7DG. They are putting the blue stripes on it today or tomorrow. Cool!

Akivega has been paint stripping the wings of 90U. This was a neat picture because you can see the paint crinkling up on the outboard side.

Maroa (I forget if that's the way he spells it, pole sana) doing the wiring inside the instrument panel of 7DG. What a bunch of confusion back there! Just kidding, I'm glad I don't have to do it.

This was the beginning of a sheetmetal project on 90U. The bottom skins in the tail section were corroded so bad that a bunch of small holes had eaten through the skin. The easiest way to deal with it was to cut out the bottom skins and replace it with new. Wow.

Here we go! Cut, cut, cut!

The finished hole...it went from the bulkhead inside the step area all the way to the inspection panel back near the end of the tail.

Here's what it will look like when finished. This was just the fitting of the new skin to get it lined up and all the holes drilled.

Firewall stiffeners! Those two gray colored stiffeners that run diagonal down the firewall are usually used on 206 floatplanes, but AIM AIR uses them for added strength on the airframe. That is one of the standards that AIM AIR utilizes on all of its aircraft. (snicker)

Tavasi gets his toolbox

Occasionally, containers arrive from the States with fun stuff that people have sent over. This is just a small bit of the fun from this past container. I guess Tavasi had ordered a new Craftsman toolbox, and it arrived on the container. It was like Christmas that afternoon as Jose presented the new toolbox to him. I helped him out with some stickers to go on it. :) What toolbox is complete without stickers?! Hope you enjoy these pictures.

This past week...

Well, sorry about not posting too many pictures lately on the blog. Things have been busy with the arrival of Ruth into our family. However, I did find time to shoot a few pictures. Things are still getting prepped on 7DG for blue stripes, so maybe this next week, we'll see some stripes on the fuselage and the tail. Meanwhile, we're busy on 90U doing some structural cleaning and also dealing with a fair amount of corrosion in the aft cabin roof area, as well as the belly of the tail.

So anyway, here's some pictures.

7DG waiting for stripes. My friend Scott Whittaker came a week or so ago from North Carolina to visit some of the surrounding countries on a survey trip. He works for Atlantic Aero, the company that provides the STC for the new engines we're installing on 7DG and 90U. He had a look over 7DG and commented how nice it looked. That was nice to hear. Thanks, Scott.

(By the way, you can see his blog here.)

I'm taking out some stringers and other frame members of 90U so that we can deal with some of the corrosion in the roof area. (Mr. Blank would be proud; I'm wearing my safety glasses.)

I took a panel out of the ceiling, too, to deal with corrosion better. It was fun. I always enjoy putting holes in airplanes. :)

Here's the panel back in, along with some of the other stringers and such. The plane looked funny for a couple days while we were getting everything all back together to rivet. There were so many clecos sticking out all around it, the plane looked like a porcupine.

Caleb, working on doublers for the exhaust mounts. The firewall is stainless steel and the frame members attached to the back side inside the cabin are aluminum. You have to make a doubler for each side out of the corresponding material in order to patch the cracks caused by the vibration of the exhaust pipe. It's just lots of fun (note the sarcasm). Working with stainless is not the easiest thing in the world, but Caleb has done a good job.

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.