PNG Rapid Response - Rest

I have written all about what we did in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in the SIL hangar. So now it's time to write a little about what we saw in Papua New Guinea, and a few of the exciting things we did during the tool-down time of evenings and weekends. 

We had a chance to get out of Ukarumpa and see some of the countryside in the East Highlands of PNG. The landscape that we flew over and drove through is very mountainous with rivers running though the valleys. The hills are either covered in trees with no visible break anywhere or the landscape had been cleared to make room for plantations, gardens, or villages. We were in PNG during the rainy season (usually rained for about 30 minutes to an hour every afternoon). 

The traditional houses are made from wood with woven banana leaves as side walls and grass on the roofs. There are houses that are built with more modern materials like corrugated steel roof panels and prefab walls. But it was interesting to note that they did not use the same techniques of African built houses made from a mixture of mud, manure and water. Maybe the weather and earthquakes do not mix well with this kind of building material. 

We also got to see numerous local wildelife in the hangar. There were large spiders, plenty of flying insects (especially at dusk), toads at night time and the rhino beetle below. They just seemed to multiply each time we went back to the hangar. Thankfully, they aren't dangerous or poisonous. Just watch out for their pinch.

The nearest town to Ukarumpa was called Kainantu. As well as local shops, supermarkets and markets ... Kainantu has a Cultural Centre. Inside they have numerous local arts and crafts including masks, bows and arrows, wood carvings, baskets and stuffed animals. They also have a room for making wool rugs from scratch and a large pottery studio. It shows some of the traditions from the area and they are all for sale. We had a chance to visit the first Saturday that we were there.

Something that we all found very interesting was the variety of bridges and the different states of repair ... or disrepair. Also, noting the variety of building materials used.

The first photo below is of the main bridge between Ukarumpa and Kainantu. The bridge is not too bad but the bank at one side has collapsed and the bridge is slipping down. Its only a matter of time till it will fall into the river. But don't worry, a new bridge has been ordered, but then who knows when it will get put into place?

The second photo is of the bridge that we took to go to a local church one Sunday. It used to be the main route into Ukarumpa but now it's just made up of rotting wood and rusting steel. Half way across you have to traverse to the other side, with nothing to hold on to. One word of advice, if you cross, look up not down.

Number three is a bridge that we drove over one day. When we came back later that same day, we decided to jump out to take a few photos of the river etc ... It wasn't until then that we realised that the wooden bridge was being supported by empty oil drums.

In photos four and five there is an interesting bridge. The top is made of the standard steel matting which is rusting and falling in, but the real fun bit is what is keeping the top section up. Underneath are two wings from a Martin B26 'Marauder' from the Second World War. Was very tempted in trying to remove a part, but I think that anything removable had already been removed.

The final photo shows a typical bridge construction. Rusting steel beams, dodgy surface and a beautiful view.

On the second Sunday, we were lucky enough to be invited to have a Mumu with one of the nationals that works at the hangar. This is a traditional meal in PNG.  A hole is dug in the ground and hot stones are placed inside, then the food is placed on top, wrapped up in banana leaves. This is then all covered over with soil with a hole in top to pour in water to steam the food. In a few hours, the food is nicely cooked and all that is left is to uncover the food and eat. This Mumu was made up of chicken, lamb, beef sausages, savoury bananas, cabbage, sweet potatoes and squash. We also had rice, sugar cane and sweet bananas.

Yummy!

Chewing on Sugar Cane.

Apart from the meat, everything else was grown right there at the house. Whilst walking around the land we found out that there were almost 20 different things being grown or cultivated. Below are just some of the produce. Rice, sugar cane, peanuts and pineapples.

One of PNG's biggest exports (apart from gold, copper and oil) is coffee. So whilst we visited the town of Goroka, we visited the Goroka Coffee roasting facility. They gave us a tour of the place, where they roast the bean, how they get the different grades of roast, where they grind them and how they pack them (either bean or grounds) ready for delivery. This place was great for Andy as he is a coffee lover (as indicated by the hugging of a coffee bush and the big smile on his face).

Whilst in PNG helping out SIL with their King Air, we wanted to find out a little about what the rest of the SIL staff were doing there in Ukarumpa. The main focus is to develop a written language for each of the hundreds of languages that are in PNG, and from that, get the bible translated into each language so the people of the villages can have the bible in their own tongue. The top two shelves in the first photo below shows all the New Testaments that have already been written in a local dialect. I also took a photo of a page from just two different languages to show just how different some languages can be in PNG. The final two photos shows a map of all the active and completed translation programs that are in PNG. Quite a few, especially considering that to develop a written language and translate the New Testament can take over 25 years to accomplish.

I just thought you might be interested to read a little more about what we were able to experience in PNG, during our downtime from work in the hangar.

PNG Rapid Response - Work

As you know, Mark has been helping out another mission with an aircraft that was damaged during a landing. This is his blog entry to try and explain all the where, what, why, who, when questions!!

Back in the early part of 2011 in Papua New Guinea, Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) Aviation department's King Air B200 had a major problem with their main landing gear whilst doing some touch-n-go's. They couldn't get three green lights which indicate that the gear are in a locked down position. in the end they had to try and land and hope for the best. They managed to land safely and get the engines shut down, but as the weight of the aircraft bore down on the landing gear, the right and then left gear collapsed causing damage to the flaps, right engine nacelle, right prop and rear fuselage.

As Tyler Weaver, who is an aircraft engineer at SIL, was also a graduate of MMS Aviation, he knew about Rapid Response teams, so they approached MMS Aviation to request a team to help them with the repair. Not long after, Jim Newman, Andy Swanson and myself got ready to go to Papua New Guinea for three weeks.

Tyler Weaver with the KingAir

The RR Team: Jim, Andy & Mark

On Friday 20th January, we said our goodbyes and started our three days of travel to the other side of the world. We finally arrived in Ukarumpa, PNG, Monday lunchtime and had a chance to finally see the damaged aircraft in person and to assess the damage that we'd have to repair. Our job was to repair and replace the damaged skins and frames in the rear section of the fuselage. In total, we had to replace three frames, two skins, one stringer and numerous brackets and doublers that were attached to the damaged frames.

The King Air B200

Tuesday morning, it was time to start on the repair. Andy and I worked on preparing the three frames that would be have to be fitted first. We had to remove any parts that were going to be transfered to the new frame and try to position them in the correct place. Some of these were quite critical like the brackets that held the flying control pulleys. If they went back in crooked, the cables could bind on the pulleys and cause major problems. The best way to position them all was to install the frame in the fuselage and backdrill all the holes from the existing structure.

While we were doing that, Jim worked on preparing the fuselage by removing all of the old sealant that was on the surround skins, getting rid of any old rivet tails that were still stuck in the structure and removing anything else that may get in the way of installing the frames and skins. 

It's worth noting that as we started on this repair, neither of the skins were actually in the hangar. They had been ordered way back in November, but as they had to be fabricated by Beechcraft, they had not yet arrived. This would have hampered us as we couldn't finish the job that we went out to do. Near the end of the first week, we heard that one of the skins was in the country and getting ready to arrive. We were all hoping that it would be the bottom skin as this has to be installed before the side skin. Unfortunately it was the side skin. We had to make do the best we could and prayed that the bottom skin would arrive before we left.

Side Skin has Arrived!!

By the middle of the second week, we finally got all three frames drilled, prepped and installed into the fuselage. In some places it took quite an effort to instal the rivets, but with some ingenuity and double jointed wrists ... we got it done.

Now it was time to start on the side skin. We had to trial fit it to make sure that we got it positioned in the correct place. As you can see from the picture below, it has a complex bend running down the centre. This had to line up with the same bend on the stringers. Once we got it right where we wanted it, it was time to start drilling the hundreds of holes needed to fix it to the fuselage. One of us would be inside back drilling whilst the other two were outside ... one to push the skin tight against the structure and the other to instal a Cleco (a sheet metal holder that is spring loaded) into every other drilled hole. By the end of the second week, we had completed all that we could. The three frames and stringer were in place, and the side skin had been drilled, dimpled and countersunk read to be installed. now were were waiting on the bottom skin. Would it get here in time for us to work on it ... or would we be passing it halfway over the Pacific?

In the mean time, we helped Tyler with other locations that were damaged on the aircraft. We helped install an angle and cover plate around the R/H Wing, Outbd Flap, Inbd Track (On the back of the wing). We also helped to troubleshoot a problem with a Raisbeck wing locker.

On Wednesday of the final week, we had the good news. The bottom skin was in Port Moresby and once they worked out how it get the large panel into the Kodiac, it arrived by lunchtime. The original plan was for us to leave Ukarumpa on the second flight on that final Friday, which meant we had two days to get it all done. Thankfully, SIL decided to put on a special flight just for us on Saturday giving us an extra day. So it was time to knuckle down and do what we could in the short time that was left.

The Bottom Skin finally arrived.

It does line up ... whew!!

Looking pretty inside.

The same thing now applied to the bottom skin as to the side skin, drill lots and lots of holes (Tyler thinks there were about 3,000 rivets in the two skins), debur the inside and countersink the outside. This took a lot of time, clecos and elbow grease.

Finally, both skins were ready to be installed. Unfortnately, as the King Air is a pressurised aircraft, both skins and EVERY rivet had to be installed with sealant. This is a brown smelly gloopy substance that will stick to anything. Thankfully tyler had purchased a sealant with a 20hr working life. This gave us enough time to smear the sealant onto all the joining surfaces, and onto each rivet tail before installing them. With time running out, we made sure that we installed enough rivets to hold the sealed edges down and also enough in the rest of the area to pull the skin up tight. As you can see below, we may not have got it finished as we had hoped, but we got a lot more done than we had dreamed after finding out that the bottom skin may not have even arrived. SIL just needs to find two guys enough time to drive about another 2,000 rivets!!! 

The finished team!!!