Having had a short break from flying Kodiaks, Mark Wuerffel and I took advantage of
Samaritan's Purse's airplane to brush up our flying/instructing skills in preparation for this year's activites. Samaritan's Purse owns one Kodiak and had it in Alaska this summer. They brought it down to their aviation base in North Carolina for the winter, and since we don't have one here at the moment, agreed to let us use it for a couple weeks.
Mark and I worked together to renew our proficiency in the airplane, and to finish his JAARS instructor standardization.
Then the world turned upside down in Haiti, and everyone's schedules changed.
Samaritan's Purse is asking
JAARS to help them with crewing this Kodiak in Haiti, so we are planning to head that way late this week. Mark will not be able to go with this first trip, but I will be accompanied by another JAARS pilot. My first visit should only be a week or so, since we also have some our our pilots coming over from Papua New Guinea for training at
STC in Spokane, and I need to go up there to finish that with them in late February.
It's looking very likely that Mark and I will find ourselves in Haiti for a good part of March.
Meanwhile,
Mission Aviation Fellowship already has one of their Kodiaks in Haiti (this photo from their website). MAF has provided service in that country for decades, and has other smaller aircraft permanently based there. The Samaritan's Purse Kodiak will join MAF's Kodiak, and all the mission agencies involved will work together to operate and crew these aircraft.
