Little Wrestler and Pizza at Work

Our son-in-law, Jason, was an excellent wrestler in his jr-high and high school years. If my memory serves me well, he placed in Ohio state tournaments. There's a new generation on the wrestling mats, so look out!

A little over a week ago I attended a tournament with Javin and Jason. It was held in a high school gymnasium where four matches were happening at once. It isn't a secret that the cardinal is the school mascot there.

Javin is in the center of the picture with his dad kneeling at the edge of the mat to offer encouragement. Javin's opponent won this match on points, not being able to pin Javin and end the match early.

Meanwhile, back at the hangar, there was a veritable smorgasbord of pizza for lunch last Friday. The owner of a plane we're working on instructed Tim, our Production Manager, to order pizza for the MMS crew.

Thanks to Focus Aviation we enjoyed a variety of pizza, in moderation of course.

Around the Town

Our daughter Jen and I (Rena) don't often get the same day off of work and other commitments, but today was an exception. We spent some time at a local home decorating store to look through wall paper books to find a suitable border for our living room. Javin, who had a day off from preschool was our critic and photographer. In fact he came near to photographing everything in the whole store! We had fun.

The New Guy

We have a new arrival at MMS. Andy Porter has joined the apprenticeship program and is in full learning mode. He is not only adjusting to his new environment in the hangar, but also a new culture since he arrived from England. We are glad to have him here.

Dwight meets with the Chairman of the Board, Ron Daugherty, periodically. We value Ron's and other Board members' dedication to the MMS ministry. Please pray for MMS as we look to the future during these hard economic times.

By the way, MMS has it's own blog now! Check it out http://mmsaviation.blogspot.com/

MAF Cessna from Chad

MAF Chad 206 Dissasembly from Paul Jones on Vimeo.

In an earlier blog post (Nov. 3 & 12, 2008) we showed pictures of the Cessna 206 for MAF on a test flight and being loaded into a sea/land container to be shipped to Chad. Paul Jones put the work on this airiplane into a slide show (beginning with slides of the airplane in Chad before coming to us) and also did a time lapsed video of the disassembly. Enjoy the show and thank you Paul.

Family

back : Scott & Stepanie Jarboe, Chanelle R, Jen and Jason Robinson

front: Dwight, Javin R, Rena

It was fun to be all together to have a belated Birthday celebration for Scott. Note: with any of our blog pictures you can double click on them to make them larger for viewing.

Oral and Practical at the mercy of the weather

Dwight is an FAA Designated Mechanic Examiner (DME). In addition to mechanics who complete the MMS Aviation training program, he administers oral and practical exams to mechanic certificate applicants from the general public. It was a special privilege for Dwight to test Ron, a retired U.S. Air Force mechanic, last week.

It seemed the weather was against them completing Ron's exams (general, airframe and powerplant). The complete oral and practical takes about 11 hours of testing so must be done over two days. Testing on Tuesday went well, but just before Ron arrived Wednesday to complete his tests, the electricity failed. There was no testing Wednesday due to the power outage and Dwight's schedule was full Thursday, so Ron had to come back Friday to finish.

There are 176 oral questions covering 44 subject areas. Practical projects must cover all 44 areas as well. Ron finished well, passing all elements of the exams and went home a newly FAA certificated aircraft mechanic.