Sunday, August 14, 2016

Flying, Flying!



More Missionary Flights

                
Sunrise preflight inspection, a frequent occurrence when there is a busy flight  schedule.

Flying, Flying!


For the last three weeks of June and the first week of July I was busy flying while Herman took a break while their daughter was born. We flew about 60 hours in about four weeks. The 60 hours includes the flights that we told about in the "Medevacs and Missionaries" post. The following pictures are a selection of pictures from some of the flights we made after the flights that were included in the "Medevacs and Missionaries" post.

We made a multipule stop, overnight flight for the ADVenir TV network. We took engineers to towns and cities in the lowlands of Bolivia so that they could do some technical studies for the TV network.
 
 Heading north from Santa Cruz we passed over much jungle.
Nearing our first stop we passed over a large area of swamp. For about ten minutes we were flying  over swamp as far as you could see.
The TV engineers with the Mooney on the ramp of the first airport where we stopped.
This is what these dirt runways look like. The runway
centerline more or less follows the cow path.
The next stop was a larger airport. It has a gravel runway instead of a dirt runway. This is the arrivals door to the terminal where arriving passengers enter the
terminal from the airplanes. The next picture is a closer shot of what is says on the glass of the door.
It says that it is prohibited to enter the terminal riding a motorcycle.
Here the airport was located inside the town so the engineers performed their work in the terminal, analyzing radio emissions in frequency spectrums.

At the next stop the airport was a grass runway that often floods, so they built a concrete ramp to park on. However, they built it a bit elevated above the taxiway from the runway. The little 200 horse Mooney did not
 have the guts to make it all the up on the ramp with four people in the plane, but
 with only one person it hopped up on the platform. Our next stop was next to the  mountains on the horizon.
 
Chinese Hunda, not to be confused with Japanese Honda.
The Atlanta native Coca Cola meets the South American native Coka Quina.
Some of these places had slim pickings for vegetarians. If you don't mind fried
 carbohydrates then you may not go hungry.
Our next stop was a paved airport with potholes in Rurrenabaque,
and another sunrise preflight inspection.
This is why a Mooney is so good for this type of flying between airports with no fuel. 4.9 gallons per hour is not bad. This is the second day of flying and we have 32 gallons left onboard. We made two more stops at airports with dirt runways. At the second stop, an active TV transmitter was repaired and was able to be put back on the air. We ended up making a fuel stop at the city named Trinidad that is 200 nautical miles north of Santa Cruz, because I was too yellow bellied to try a 300 nautical mile flight with only 20 gallons onboard even though the plane could have covered the distance in three hours burning four gallons per hour. We arrived in Santa Cruz with about a 50 gallon reserve rather than a five gallon reserve.
 

The TV network was awarded broadcasting licences in most of the towns and cities that we flew the engineers to. Praise the Lord.

Next follows a few pictures of mission flights and another medevac flight.
A picture of a flight moving volunteers to help build the new boys dorm at the school in Guayaramerin.
A picture of Wes and Patty on the way to Rurrenabaque. They were on the way to join a mission trip up the river from Rurrenabaque in the mountains in a native village. We also flew a couple who were a doctor and nurse who were going on the same mission trip.
This is another sunrise preflight inspection for a medevac flight I made to Rurrenabaque.
The rising sun hitting the mountains after taking off from the TV station runway in Santa Cruz.
The local news reports in Rurrenabaque interviewing the mother of the boy that we flew. The news channel was fundraising for the boy's medical expenses in Santa Cruz. They thought that the boy had a deformed hip bone that was causing his hip to be dislocated. They believed that he would need surgery to correct it. The boy was in very much pain and the only other option was a one or two day trip over very rough roads to either La Paz or Santa Cruz.
The boy after we landed in Santa Cruz. They gave him pain medications when he got in the plane, that is why he was smiling for the picture.

I want to thank all those who support us so we can do this work. This is made possible by people like you. I want to thank those who support us in prayer and financially. Thank you for being a blessing to these people.

God bless,
Steven, Helen, Timothy, and James Wilson

We are volunteer missionaries entirely funded by donations. 100% of your donations go directly to us and our project in Bolivia. If you'd like to be a part, we accept tax-deductible donations through Gospel Ministries International, Inc.

Donate via:
1.  PayPal  (timt@gospelministry.org)
2.  Check:  P.O. Box 506, Collegedale, TN 37315

With either method, please include a note stating:  "Bolivia Aviation Services - Wilson"

Thanks for your support!







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