Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Close to Ready



Kodiak 038 has been in the JAARS hangar for the past six weeks, undergoing final touches before its trip to Papua New Guinea where it will join Kodiak 008 that has flown over 500 hours in service to missionaries and villages.  Our team in PNG is eager to get their second one.


"Why does a new airplane need to sit in the shop for six weeks?" you might ask.  There are a few modifications that we must do to it here before it's ready to enter service.  One is the installation of a high frequency "HF" radio.  Another is the installation of an engine fire detection system.  Neither of these are offered by Quest as options yet.  So our engineer and maintenance team here has designed these installations, and must get FAA approval before the airplane is returned to airworthiness.  Add all the other minor additions, and six weeks goes by pretty fast.


Here you can take a look at what's behind those pretty screens -- just a collection of boxes creatively called "LRU's" by Garmin -- "Line Replaceable Units."  Perhaps that gives you an idea of how maintainable these boxes are on the field -- not!  Basically they're "remove and replace" maintenance items for the avionics technicians.


Lloyd Marsden is one of our technicians from PNG who was in the States and came to JAARS to get in on the fun.