Beckwith's Big Adventure: Man At Work

Hey there everyone ... after Jenny had written about what she's been up to ... I thought that I'd write about what I've been up to in the hangar. As you can see from the photos below ... the Cessna 206 that we've been working on is now looking very smart. The wings have had their final coats of paint ... which I had a hand in doing. Also, the fuselage has now got it's stripes ... blue, green & yellow ... the colours of Brazil where it will end up flying once complete.

Me standing in the paint booth with the wings.

The fuselage with it's stripes.

It is all looking pretty, we have put the wings, vertical & horizontal stabilisers on. I am now busy rigging all of the control cables that run through the fuselage and the wing and connect the rudder, elevator, ailerons and flaps ... but not all together ;o)

Now with it's wings, just waiting for the rudder & stabiliser.

The work that we do here at MMS Aviation is to help out other Aviation Missions with their aircraft and try to help save them a buck or two. For example, as all the staff & apprentices raise their own wages, MMS Aviation do not charge the Missions man-hours for the work they do, just the cost of all the new parts and materials. There are other areas that we try to save them money too. The Cessna that I'm working on will be converted to an amphibian aircraft with floats, this means we have to loose the undercarriage and nose wheel. To do this we have to add various new parts. We needed to order two brackets that are needed but they came to over $300 new. So I was tasked with manufacturing them out of stock aluminium, below you can see the originals and the two that I made. By doing this we have saved the mission a lot of money!!!

Can you tell which ones are the originals and which are mine???

(The ones I made are at the bottom)

Last week, five of us travelled north for about an hour to Preferred Airparts in Kidron, Ohio (Visit www.preferredairparts.com for more of the things that they do there). The reason for the visit was to remove the wings from a DC-3 which had been purchased by Missionary Flights International (www.missionaryflights.org) who have been doing a lot of flights to help the people of Haiti after the earthquake. They will be putting the engines of this newly purchased aircraft onto one down in Florida that has been flying overtime lately and needs it's engines overhauled, like yesterday.

The wings had to be taken off, so that it could fit in the hanger with all the other aircraft they have at Preferred Airparts. They will now be able to remove the engines and do some modifications to the fuselage/flaps/avionics etc. As you can see below, a DC-3 is not a small aircraft so there were many challenges. First, we had to remove the ailerons (the things on the wings that help it turn), flaps (the big things on the wings that come down when taking-off or landing) and disconnect the control cables. Then, each wing is held on by 330 1/4inch bolts that have been put on with a locking compound. Each wing was a challenge in itself but we managed to remove both of them in around 5 hours. I'd like to thank the guys at Preferred Airparts for all the help and for the lovely lunch they provided (boiled ham, green beans and grated potatoes in a cheese sauce followed by a trio of homemade ice-cream cakes). There is a possibility that later on this year, we will go back up there to help remove the two engines. Below are a few snap shots of our day.