Friday, July 25, 2014

There is an angel among us

Here at MMS we have the great privilege of maintaining airplanes from all over the world. One of these airplanes that we are currently maintaining is an Angel aircraft. This particular airplane was designed by a missionary for missionary use. It can seat between 6-8 people. It utilizes Lycoming IO540 engines that push from behind the wing. This basically means the engines look like they are on there backwards with the props on the back rather than facing to the front. By doing this it allows for easy cargo loading in the front of the wings. These are very unique airplanes and there are only five of them in the world. The one that we have in our hangar has a serial number of #002. To learn more about these unique aircraft you can go to their website at www.angelaircraft.com. Here at MMS we have been given the task of  preparing the airplane for export to Bolivia. Some of the tasks that we are performing are: The overhauling of both engines, the over- hauling of both propellers, the annual inspection, servicing of the struts, the fixing of some fuel seepage, and other various maintenance items as needed.

This particular airplane has been donated to South America Mission. You can learn more about South America Mission by going to their website at www.southamericamission.org . Currently we have helped serve 106 missions organizations around the world with their needs. God has brought many talented individuals to serve here at MMS. Each individual brings a unique gifting and set of talents that balances the work that we do here. Part of our mission is to prepare people and we do this through a 30 month apprenticeship where they will get the necessary hands on training to qualify them for their airframe and power plant certificate, working on real air planes in a real shop. These apprentices then will move on to serve with one of the 165 Christian mission flight organizations around the world. Here is a look into part of the many projects for the Angel aircraft.
Apprentice Glen Evert seems to be up to his elbows in work
 Glen is removing old fuel tank sealant in the right wing fuel tank
Josh Adelsberger is assembling the right engine of the Angel
After assembly the right engine is now being test run to make sure that it meets the requirements. Dale Coates is monitoring all of the information on the computer you see at the right.