Cake and Propeller Balancing

Last week, if you follow us on Facebook, you will have seen that I celebrated my birthday with a fantastic engineer cake. Apparently I spent much of the summer telling everyone we met that we really need an engineer here in Chad, so Matt and the children decided to make me one. 

Unfortunately Playmobil people don't qualify to get licences here, but I did also have a temporary engineer from Kenya with us for my birthday and we spent the day balancing the propeller on our Cessna Caravan (technically Vincent and the rest of the team did the balancing, I just had to keep starting and stopping the engine). How and why do you balance a propeller I can hear you all ask?!

Vincent fitted a new propeller last week and so it needed to be balanced to ensure the blades move evenly through the air when flying. To do this we first ran the engine with a propeller balancing machine fitted to the engine cowling. This machine senses any unbalance and suggests where to add the weights. Behind the propeller is a big disk with holes all around the rim and weights are added to this rim. The weights are screws and washers, which are carefully weighed, then added. The final task is to run the engine again and see if the propeller is balanced, if not the machine gives new holes to put weights in. This time it took three runs to get the balance within limits. 

Nekob, Vincent and Arsene with the balancing machine

Machine, weights and scales

Vincent adding the weights

On the compound we have been busy painting our bin lids to help separate things we can compost or recycle here from things that still need to be collected by the refuse company (mostly just plastic). Once I had got the paints out, the children were quick to join in and do their own paintings. 

Thursday was a public holiday to celebrate the country's independence. There was a flypast over the city which we caught a glimpse of, and at the compound we had a BBQ together.   

There has been rain almost every day since we have been back and last week saw some particularly heavy rain, which turned our compound into a lake!

Finally, on Saturday there was a "welcome meeting" before the start of school, for families of children who attend. It was nice to catch up with families who we haven't seen for a couple of months and meet families of children who are starting this term. Luke had a good look around his new classroom and all the children enjoyed exploring the new play equipment that has been installed during the summer break.