On the 7th of January Trace, Matthew and I flew one of the Flying Mission aircraft down to Botswana so that we could change the engine in it at the Flying Mission hanger there. With this engine, after 2000 hours of flight we are required to change it. The engine was still running string after all this time though it was starting to use some oil.
I worked alongside Joel (our chief engineer), after the first 2 days we were able to to remove the old engine. Next was cleaning up engine compartment and fixing anything that might be wrong. This also included putting in a rebuilt nose gear which is normally done when installing a new engine.We were also able to make a few other improvements, install the new engine with new controls, fuel and oil lines. After 2 weeks of work we were able to take it for an hour long test flight. Everything went well with just a few adjustments as needed.
After everything was done we flew the plane to South Africa for a Southern African Alliance Missions meeting. It was good to hear from other missions in how they are serving and the struggles that they are also facing. While there we dropped the plane off so that is could get a new paint job as the original paint was starting to come off.
