Matt and Becki Dillingham

Grounded

On the 18th December I did a flight from Antananarivo to Besalmpy with a team from US AID. I sat by my plane making felt food for Bethan's Christmas present (the glamorous life of a pilot!!) and met a lovely young lady called Sandra. She only spoke Malagasy but was quite happy to chat to me for half an hour and managed to make me understand that she liked my plane, introduce me to her father and leave me with a mango as a gift.
After a few hours, the USAID team returned to continue their journey to Maintirano, where I would leave them and planned to collect them from, a few days later. After completing the fun task of refuelling the plane (sat on the wing with jerry cans) I flew back to Antananarivo. Unfortunately half way home, whilst completing a routine check of the instruments, I noticed a drop in oil pressure. Normally it reads just above the green arc but now it was reading at the bottom of the green. Fortunately, I made it back to our hanger without any further problems.

After landing and talking to Rob, the chief engineer, the aircraft was temporarily grounded pending a test flight. The next morning Rob and the training captain taxied out to check the aircraft. When they taxied back a few minutes later we knew it was bad news - the plane was permanently grounded until the problem could be resolved. As the oil temperature and everything else appeared normal, the obvious conclusion was that there was a problem with the pressure relief valve in the oil filter so a new one was ordered just before Christmas. The new part made it through customs and into the MAF hanger in record time and was fitted before the new year. Unfortunately this did not resolve the problem so the aircraft is still grounded and the engine will now make it's way to France to be overhauled, which could take 2 months.

In the meantime, I have been re-writing the airstrip directory, which is a book of charts showing us important information about the places we land and what the runway and surrounding area looks like. Some of our charts had nothing on them and others were hard to decipher. Here is a before and after photo:

Bethan is also trying to help fix the plane! She has sent in drawings, tea and chocolate to make it feel better and finally resorted to building me a new one!