Stuck

A week ago, Ian headed off in the Cessna 182 to Galmi and Dave and I began working on a long list of things we wanted to get done at the hangar. After a while, we got a text message from Ian that he had landed. Then a little while later, we got a call from him that he was stuck. When he went to start the plane, the starter fried. We're thankful to have two planes at times like these. Rather than driving 6 hours to take the spare starter and fix the plane, Dave and I got everything together and flew to Galmi in the other plane. Every day here is full of unexpected events. There's rarely a day that goes just as planned. Here's a rare picture of both planes sitting at Galmi at the same time.


Instead of a six hour drive, Dave and I were in Galmi with a new starter in an hour and a half. Here's our SIMAIR team in Niger right now. We're missing Ed, who is in Canada for the year. In this picture you see me on the left, Ian in the center, and Dave on the right.


You can only get so many sets of hands in a small space to work on one starter, so I was forced to supervise.


Ian did some supervising as well. We wanted to make sure Dave felt like he was needed.


Here's the old starter with the burn marks on it.


An hour later, Ian was taking off with the passenger to head back to Niamey.


Dave and I waited around for another 20 minutes before we followed in the other plane.