Pooling Resources

The mission aviation effort in Haiti continues with MAF as the host and principle player.  Their Kodiak was brought down to help the existing program with three Cessnas.  The Samaritan's Purse Kodiak is also helping, crewed by us JAARS pilots.  I've been here two weeks of my rotation, and have a little less than two to go.  Occassionally several planes go to the same place, as pictured here, at Mole St. Nicolas on the northwest coast.  Some parts of Haiti's north coast are desert, complete with cactus.

The loads vary, but often we're carrying MRE's - meals ready to eat - from the UN's World Food Program.  Depending on the type of MRE, we can carry between 1,000 and 1,300 MRE's per flight.  The food is going to help the displaced people who have fled Port Au Prince, and are on their families' doorsteps back in their home villages.  One town 50 miles from Port Au Prince has around 100,000 displaced people in and around it.

Often we're carrying teams, mostly from the U.S, of medical workers and other mission workers.  Here a load of riders gets a briefing on the operation of the passenger door in the Kodiak.

MAF's Kodiak N103MF on the roll from Hinche, central Haiti.  This airplane is actually slated to join two other Kodiaks already in Southeast Asia, but it was temporarily diverted here to help in the relief effort.

Back to My Other Job

Meanwhile, our own Kodiak program development must continue, so Mark and I found ourselves back in Spokane to wrap up the Kodiak training of two more of our pilots from Papua New Guinea, Jonathan Federwitz and Remi Vanwereskerken.

As before, the Spokane Turbine Center course had given them excellent transition into the airplane, and our week with them was a pleasure.  STC gave us free use of their facilities, and had the airplane and simulator reserved for our use as well. Since we don't have a full-time airplane at JAARS in Waxhaw, STC provides us with a very valuable resource for projects like this.

The simulator offers an incredibly realistic Kodiak cockpit in which to perform operations and emergency procedures that would be too hazardous in the actual airplane.  It even has a database that "covers the world," offering acurate terrain visuals as well as a complete aviation facitilies database.  The two trainees were able to conduct most of their simulator training in the familiar terrain and environment of Papua New Guinea.  Here you can see them on a road in a valley in PNG after a simulated emergency landing (see the car on the road?).