Mission Aviation

How many aviation missions do you think are out there at the moment? How many could you actually name? (I hope at least two ... the two that we are involved with ... you know ... it's there somewhere!!) 

Well, there are over 120 aviation missions around the world that include training schools, maintenance facilities, flying missions that transport people/equipment for other missions and missions that fly themselves. Mark will fill you in on some of the finer details ...

I hope that you remembered MMS Aviation and MAF UK (Mission Aviation Fellowship). MMS Aviation is a training school and a repair station here in Coshocton, Ohio where I have been training for the past two years. Then in a years time, when the training is over and hopefully I will have an A&P License in my name, I will be serving with MAF UK for a minimum of eight more years somewhere in the developing world.

Whilst at MMS Aviation, I have been exposed to numerous different missions, some that I had heard of before but many that I had not. At the moment I am working on a Cessna 402 belonging to Wings with The Word. Also in the hangar right now we have Air Calvery's Cessna 207 from Gabon and Asas de Socorro's Cessna 206 which are both about to be returned to service. Then there is a Cessna 172 from GCI (Gospel Carrier International). They have two others aircraft that come in periodically for servicing. They are a Beechcraft King Air and a Cessna 310. The final aircraft here at the moment that represents another mission is a Cessna 206 from MAG (Missionary Air Group).

So, there are seven missions represented at the moment in the hangar but I have worked on many more from other missions. These include a Douglas DC-3 from MFI (Missionary Flights International), a Piper Aztec from Pfeifer Evangelical Association, Brigade Air's Cessna 172 and a MAF Cessna 206. There are also many other missions that we at MMS have contact with: JAARS, CMML (Christian Missions in Many Lands), AIM Air (Africa Inland Mission), SAM Air (South American Mission), Moody Aviation, Arctic Barnabas and Agape Flights.

Lastly, there are two other Missions that are very important to what we do. There is IAMA (International Association of Missionary Aviation) and MSI (Mission Safety International). Although they do not fly, repair or train, they are very important in keeping Mission Aviation groups alive and able to operate.

Since 1975, when MMS Aviation first came about, they have been able to serve 96 mission aviation organisations by either repairing/servicing their aircraft, sending a Rapid Response team to help them in the field, or a newly licensed A&P mechanic has joined them to serve. Just in 2010, MMS engineers and apprentices worked on 31 missionary aircraft from 15 ministries and invested over 11,000 maintenance hours saving mission aviation approximately $450,000 (approx £300,000) in labour expenses alone. It's great to play a part in this.

Our Pumpkin Patch Adventure

On Friday night we joined the MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) annual hayride and pumpkin patch evening at Schumaker Farms. It seems that most people we know do one or the other (or both!!) at this time of the year ... very cultural!!

The tractor pulled three trailers full of MOPS families up to the pumpkin patch ... all sitting on hay bales. It was so much fun and all the kids, including Abigail really loved the whole experience!

Once we arrived at the pumpkin patch we all jumped off and went hunting for the orange 'globes' to take home with us. It was the first time any of the Beckwith family had been in a pumpkin patch before! We picked up two, one for each of the girls and even though the ones we'd chosen weren't huge, Abigail had trouble carrying them!

We finished the evening off roasting hot dogs and marshmallows round a campfire ... that's when all the MOPS dads finally came into their own! It was a great evening ... but ...

... when we got home, Mark realised that he was no longer wearing his wedding ring ... and the last time he remembered wearing it was at the beginning of the evening :o( He returned to the farm the following morning but had no luck. As you can imagine we were gutted.

Jenny flicked through the photos we had taken while we were there in the slim possibility that we would find some clues ... amazingly we did!! Check out the photos below ... at the beginning of the hay ride Mark was wearing his ring and after picking pumpkins he wasn't ... basically he lost it during the most difficult part of the evening to track!

Using the wonders of Facebook we were able to borrow a metal detector from some friends at church. On Sunday lunchtime almost 48 hours after Mark lost his ring, we headed back to the pumpkin patch ... with little hope of actually finding it but the determination to at least try!

We remembered that when we had stopped on the hayride we had noticed a squashed pumpkin with the name Emily on it ... we thought it was a bit sad at the time that her pumpkin was splatted ... but on Sunday used it to locate the spot where our search would begin.

With lots of prayers from us and loads of friends and family, here and back home, we started to look. Amazingly less than 2 feet from the Emily pumpkin, without even needing to use the metal detector we found Mark's ring ... in the end it really was that 'easy'!!

Lots of smiles and celebrations occurred in that pumpkin patch on Sunday lunchtime! ;o)

As you can see, while it was a family occasion, some of us were more captivated by the whole experience than others!

We want to say a BIG thank you to 'Emily', whoever you are. While you may never get to enjoy your pumpkin, you certainly helped make our first pumpkin patch adventure one we will always remember ... for the right reasons!

Cessna 402B Update: The Latest Sagas

Again ... it's been a while since I wrote about what has been happening with what I've been doing in the hangar. Well, most of my time has been involved in the Cessna 402 (surprise surprise). When I last wrote, we had managed to hang the landing gear, but had to stop due to lack of finances. We got the money in to continue the work and have been very busy. 

Unfortunately, when servicing the right hand landing gear, the hydraulic fluid did not look too good, so it had to be removed and replace all the o-rings and seals. Once that was done, we managed to get it all back together again. But just before we got ready to rig the gear, we ended up removing the landing gear actuator and reduction gears due to worn gears, unidentified grease and damaged bolt holes. It was a very messy job with grease everywhere, you can see in one of the photos a tub full of grease that had to be removed, but was a great experience to see the inner workings of an actuator. Once this was all repaired, re-greased and re-assembled, we installed it ready to rig the gear.

The insides of the reduction gear box.

The grease that we pulled out ... there was still a bit more to come as well.

Some of the insides of the Main Gear Actuator

Rigging the gear turned out to be less difficult than we first thought, but then as we were rigging from scratch and not just trying to adjust it, all we had to do was follow the Cessna Maintenance Manual step by step. After a few days we had both main and nose gear rigged and working perfectly. This meant that after 18 months of wheels up, we could finally put the aircraft back onto it's wheels. It was a great feeling to finally see it back on the ground.

In the cockpit, the avionics have been updated, which meant that a lot of old systems had to be removed, along with all the redundant wires, switched, circuit breakers and antennas. As you can see from the photos, there are a lot of wires to work through to remove just the redundant ones. I found myself stuck in a cramped cockpit for about a week, feeding these in and out of the small holes. For those who understand these things, there is a new GPS/NAV/COM unit, audio panel and transponder. The other units going in is a GPS unit, NAV/COM and an ADF (for when he's flying in Canada). The last photo is of a new wire loom that will go to the new circuit breakers for all the avionics.

I have also repaired the four side cowls (the structure that covers the engines). Two of the cowls had severe corrosion on the bulb angle, so had to be replaced. There was also corrosion and cracks on the pans and three of the cowl flap hinges needed replacing due to wear. Lastly, there were numerous cracks that needed stopping and strengthening. I finally got them all repaired and installed back onto the aircraft.

This is just some of the work that I have been involved in whilst working on the 402. The last few weeks I have been repairing the lower cabin door/steps by fabricating almost a whole new step due to cracking and have repaired damage to a door that has see many people climb up and down them. Yesterday and today I have been working with Mike Dunkley, one of our supervisors who has 20+ years maintaining aircraft all over the world, to rivet together the horizontal stabiliser (tailplane for those in the UK). The left hand leading edge had to be changed due to corrosion and incorrect hardware, whilst the lower skin had so much damage it too had to be replaced. These had been fabricated by two other engineers, but as it was just Mike and myself working on the 402 due to holidays, illness and family emergencies, we got on and riveted it all together.

We still have quite a bit more work to do ... but when we got the wheels back onto the ground, it felt like we had turned a corner.