Whilst still on Rapid Response in PNG, I was asked to consider travelling 1,100 miles south to Florida to help Missionary Flights International (MFI) a week after returning home. Thankfully, I had a few more weeks at home before heading south ... and the whole family came with me this time which made the adventure all the more fun.
MFI fly missionaries, aid, food, medicine and equipment in DC3's from Fort Pierce, Florida to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. At the moment they have 2 Douglas DC3's with turbine engines, 2 Douglas DC3's with radial engines (that are for sale/sold) and a Cessna 310. The turbine DC3's need regular maintenance, the radial DC3's need to be worked on to get them ready for sale. The C310 had an accident when it had to land without it's nose landing gear, which means a lot of work is required to get it airworthy again.
Part of the this trip was for me (and the whole family) to get an insight into front-line maintenance. This kind of maintenance is very different to what I have been exposed to at MMS. When working with a front-line maintenance facility, you have to get the maintenance done in-between flights and not the other way round. I got to help with a 'phase inspection' on a DC3. The first part was to check the wheels, tires, brakes, axles and bearings. Everything on a DC3 is so much bigger than anything that I've had to deal with on Beechcraft, Cessna and Piper aircraft. As you can see from the photos below, the main wheel bearings take more effort to repack with grease. The bottom right photo shows the difference between a Cessna bearing and one from a DC3.
The other part of the 'phase inspection' was to check over the two engines, inspect the oil, fuel and air filters/screens, and replace all the the fuel injectors. This has been very useful for me as this will be the kind of maintenance that I will be performing once on project with MAF, as almost all projects have a Cessna Caravan that have turbine engines.
Whilst at MFI, I also got to experience a flight to Haiti. When a flight has more than 19 passengers, they are required to have a flight attendant on board and this responsibility fell to me. After reading up on the requirements and safety responsibilities of a flight attendant, answers some multipal choice questions, and shown the ins and outs of the aircraft, I was qualified to serve as a flight attendant. We flew from Florida to the Bahamas to refuel, then on to Haiti to drop off 30 missionaries and then pick up 22 others to bring them back home. It was a very busy day serving all the people, loading and un-loading baggage and being on call the whole time, but it was also an amazing experience. One that Jenny wished she could have done also.
I also got to help troubleshoot numerous issues on the aircraft. When an aircraft returns from a trip, any problems are noted by the pilots and it's up to the engineers to discover what is causing the problem and then fix it before the next flight. The troubleshooting that I was involved in, included a broken cabin door latch, erroneous engine temperature readings and failure of cabin heat from the left engine.
We had an amazing time down in Florida with MFI, and it was really useful to be part of the team working to get the aircraft ready to fly the next day, no matter what had to be done. It gave me more confidence in my abilities and encouraged me that I will be able to perform my tasks when we finally arrive on project.
