From the Logbook...A.O.G.

Aircraft on the Ground. It is supposed to be a fearful three letter acronym that connotes despair and stress. In this case, aircraft should be thought of in the plural sense. I have been turning wrenches all week (which has been a lot of fun) trying to get our airplanes airborne again. Last week I flew one of our aircraft in for a routine inspection. We are still in the midst of completing it, hopefully we will be done tomorrow. The pesky problem in the nose gear I that mentioned before we found easy enough, but fixing it has been slow and hard.

This past weekend, our other aircraft developed an oil leak, a small one. After we investigated it a little bit, we determined it needed to be fixed until further operational flights. So, we flew it out to our maintenance base in Mitla only to find that the .50 cent part that we need, a brass crush washer, is not in stock. So, for fault of a simple a cheap part, our other aircraft is on the ground until fresh parts arrive, hopefully tomorrow as well.

So, I will head back out to our maintenance base again in the morning for another round of wrench turning. It has been fun to be back at it in the maintenance department. I hope to be able to test fly at least one airplane tomorrow, maybe both.