Wings off, wings on!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu2lOc_4H-E

King Air B200, N468SP

 We greeted our newest member of the fleet at the end of March.  Actually, it arrived in Nairobi the same day that we arrived back in Nairobi after being in Addis Ababa.  It is a King Air B200, with the registration of N468SP.  We de-registered the other King Air and gave this one the same name.  It's a 1998 model, like 15 or more years newer than the other one.  So far it looks pretty good.  There are a few differences from the other one, but it's still a hot rod machine!  

 Where she sits in the hangar these days while getting some final things worked out before going active.  

 This one has a different cargo door arrangement.  The little door in the back is a modification done to the normal airstair door.  It's a bit different, but should meet the needs out here in Kenya. 

Note some differences: different exhaust stacks, different paint on the cowlings, different landing gear doors.  I'm sure there are more, but those are some of the obvious ones.  It looks good anyway! 

Floatplane!

 Wow, sorry about the hiatus from my blog.  We had family here a couple weeks ago and then we went up to Addis Ababa for part of our adoption process.  If you're interested in that, please see my wife's blog here.  While I was gone from work, the guys completed the installation of the floats onto N341EA and it actually had gone down to Lake Victoria, near Mwanza, TZ for some of the pilots to do some training.  It came back just this past Sunday night for a few days, so we had it in the hangar to fix a few things before it departed again for the lake and some more training.  And for those of you wondering, it flew GREAT down on the lake!  The guys were very impressed and we have seen wonderful performance from this airplane.  It's just another reminder that God is leading along in our journey and while sometimes we are unsure of life's outcomes, He is in total control. 

  Sitting in the front of the hangar while we were working on it. 

 I showed the line maintenance guys how to get the water out of the floats.  James was surprised to see so much water coming out! 

 Any ideas who this is?  Ha!  It's Peter Williams, working on the depth finder down inside the float.  The depth finder allows the pilot to "see" what's down in the water so they can avoid hitting things they can't see, just like when boating. 

 Lookin' good outside the hangar. 

Aerocet 3400s on a Cessna 206

Below is a progress of the float installation for N341EA, the Samaritan's Purse floatplane.  It was a really fun installation.  As always with a new installation, there are some snags and stuff, which for us can be amplified since we are in Kenya.  This makes things difficult for support and also for getting parts in a timely manner.  Aside from that, we made things work as much as possible and got some really good progress.  Enjoy the pictures!

 The floats unpacked and ready for assembly.  

Getting the spreader bars ready to install.  

The "taka taka" - all the parts that come along for the install.  

Got 'em pointed the same direction and spreader bars ready to be installed.  

The water rudder.  This enables the aircraft to be steered while in the water.  

Tavasi getting the water rudder installed.  

Getting things in position.  The floats were "together" and the airplane was being prepped for hoisting.  

We have a really nice set of hoisting cables that we used.  Cessna recommends using cables at least 60 inches long, so the attach points are not damaged.  

Up in the air.  Time to get the land legs off!  

Sleek!  It almost looks like a 210!  

Tavasi looks happy with the installation of the ventral fin.  This is part of the floatplane modification.  

Up in the air!  I was on top manning the hoist, while Tavasi is measuring how high we are in the air.  We needed something like 72 inches from floor to belly to slip the floats underneath and allow some jiggle room.  

Seriously!  It looks like a 210 flying through the hangar!

Sliding the floats underneath...you can see we got a little higher than we needed. :)

Myself and Marko getting the front struts installed.  

Tavasi drove the hoist while we got all the struts semi-attached.  

View from the rear.  

Myself and Tavasi discussing the location of one of the cable pulleys.  Gotta love the ramen shirt!

Rear steps.  

Here's the emergency hydraulic hand pump (front) and the water rudder retract handle (the black thing closer to us), which are located on the floor between the front seats.  

The electric hydraulic pump assembly.  This is located on the left side of the rear fuselage, back in the tail cone.  You can see the empennage flight control cables on the left.  

Assembled.  You can see the crew steps mounted between the aft and mid struts.  Looks good!

Frontage!

So working on the engine is a little bit difficult on floatplanes, since it's so high up.  I found a nice long box that the ventral fin came in, and it worked really nice to work off of.  I was doing some work on the supercharger in this picture.  

Look closely in this picture...what do you see?  The gear is retracted!  This was my first retraction test...and it worked great!  I worked through the gear retractions a few times, trying to work out any bugs.  We only had a few small leaks, but everything worked great!  Praise the Lord!

Last shot of the day...

Cessna 206 floatplane!

Here's my latest pictures of the floatplane.  And it actually looks like a floatplane!  We got the airplane into the back of the hangar where the hoist is and got it all attached and went to town on getting the floats installed.  I will post some more pictures later, but I wanted to get a couple pictures out for all my friends to see! This is the first Cessna 206 with a supercharged IO-550-N and also the first with this type of floats (Aerocet 3400 amphibs).  Sweeeeeeeet!!

  

JPI EDM-930 in a Cessna 206

The past week we have installed our third JPI EDM-930 here at AIM Air.  This time, we installed it into N827DG, the first Cessna U206G that I helped rebuild back in 2008.  It was a fun installation and we worked through it pretty well.  The first time we ran the engine, all things went well, and it has flown on a test flight as well with no problems.  That's always good!  Anyway, hope you all enjoy the photos. 

Here's the IO-550-N that's installed on 7DG.  You can see that it's been working hard for the past coulple years.  Africa really is rough on our airplanes...lots of difficult places we fly into around these parts.

The old instrument panel.  It was pretty much original Cessna engine instruments, except for an EI UBG-16, mounted in the panel just above the co-pilot yoke, where the original EGT gauge was located. 

Pulling out the UBG-16 sensor boxes, which were hidden above the glovebox behind the right side panel.  Looks like entrails getting pulled out. :) 

All the guts...this is all the old stuff, plus some of the items removed to facilitate removal/installation. 

Myself, working on getting the new instrument panel measured out. 

All the instruments removed, ready for a new panel. 

Fitting the new panel for the EDM-930. 

Fits great!

Here I am getting the RPM sensor installed in the RH magneto.  It's pretty much a pain since you have to put the sensor in the bottom of the magneto...meaning you have to either take off the magneto, or take off one of the induction tubes to twist the loosened magneto around enough to install the sensor.  Argh.

David, our avionics technician, getting his wire bundles together to be installed. 

Work in progress...wires hanging out, pieces missing...

David working  through his wire bundles. 

Here I'm getting the Remote Alarm Display (RAD) installed on the instrument panel.  You can see it on the top of the panel, just to the upper left of my hand...it's that little rectangle thing above and between the two flight instruments.  The RAD gives you information from the main display in case of exceeded parameters.  Otherwise, it normally reads RPM and manifold pressure. 

Myself, giving some input to Peter (our UK short termer) on installation of the fuel flow transducer and it's newly fabricated fuel lines. 

Caleb worked a bit on getting the wire harnesses on the engine sorted out.  He did a really nice job - it really looks nice and clean. 

All wire bundles ready for installation of the instrument panel and the display. 

Final installation of the new panel with the JPI EDM-930 installed.  

And the new panel.  Looks great!