December 31st

A Happy New Year to everybody!

As you may have gathered, I didn’t send out a weekly news last week, partly because I didn’t get around to it and partly because I knew that there’d be a lot of WhatsApp or Skype conversations anyway. Actually talking always beats emails, texts or other forms of messaging.

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We had some particularly sad news just after Christmas. The daughter, Vicki (née Butler), of the MAF General Manager who was here when we first arrived, Gil Butler, died in childbirth. It’s strange that having lived in PNG where the risks of childbirth, and maternal and baby deaths are so common, when the same thing happens in a developed country with excellent medical facilities, it is much more of a shock.

Vicki taught Peter and Philip piano, and somewhere at home I have some video of her singing a duet with Nicki at one of our staff conferences. Our thoughts and prayers are with Gil and Elaine, her brother Cameron, and of course her husband and family whom we’ve never met.

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I find that I could easily get accustomed to three day working weeks. Maybe I’m getting lazy, though I never want for things to do. The largest flower bed in the garden is looking as good as it has ever looked after the weeding, replanting and cutting back that I’ve done over the last couple of months. Yesterday saw me working at the back of the bed trying to reduce the amount of a large, deeply rooted grass that loves growing in the middle of other plants where it’s hard to get at.

One job I didn’t get around to yesterday, or over the Christmas holiday, is doing some more crate construction. I did buy some more battens yesterday, only to find I’d chosen a slightly smaller size than I intended. I don’t think it will matter providing I use them on the ends and lids of the crates, and being smaller it will make the crates lighter, which is always an advantage.

Cutting these battens to length and screwing the first crates together is on the agenda for tomorrow, when I’m also looking forward to using my new cordless drill for the first time.

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Today, 31st December 2017, is officially my last day as Flight Operations Manager. Tomorrow Brad Venter officially takes over, though for the time being I remain the official Senior Person accountable to CASA PNG. This is because I’ll cover for Brad when he’s on leave during the middle and second half of the year. As I said to him, he has the authority and I take the blame.

For the next couple of months there are some FOM projects I remain responsible for, some long-outstanding tasks to deal with from my other job as Twin Otter Fleet Training Captain, and obviously providing backup for Brad as and when he needs it. Then, ten weeks from today, we arrive back in the UK. I have no doubt that 2018 will go more quickly than 2017 has, but I hope that by this time next year we will have at least some idea of what we’ll be doing in 2019!

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I was hoping to clock my total flying hours over 11,000 before year’s end, but as of today I’m 0.5 hour short. Never mind, instead of rolling over on the last flight of 2017, I’ll do it on the first flight of 2018, which is scheduled for next Thursday.

December has been a lean month for me flying-wise. There’s been quite a lot of aircraft maintenance, as well as other things I’ve been involved in, that have reduced my opportunities or availability. Plus, of course, the holiday itself which has taken a couple of flying days out of the month. Maybe now I’m handing over the FOM role, I might, just might, have a bit more availability to fly.

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There has been the usual plethora of home-made firecrackers producing regular bangs through both day and evening (fortunately not too much during the night). I’m told they’re made out of match heads, though the particular method and formula I don’t know. Whether there are any consequential burns, eye injuries or similar I have no idea.

The drinking club up the road has also been noisy again, and even as I write, 15:50 on a Sunday afternoon, there is a thumping beat emanating from it. It’s not so loud at the moment that it would disturb sleep, though most nights recently we’ve used ear plugs, but the incessant noise makes us yearn for peace and quiet.

Very often there’s a lot of noise at midnight on New Year’s Eve, with firecrackers, sometimes fireworks, and banging on fences or anything else that’s noisy and to hand. Since neither Nicki or I see very much difference between this night and any other (what a pair of old bores!) we hope to sleep through it all.

Whether you see the New Year in, or sleep it in, may 2018 bring increasing faith, joy, encouragement and interest.

December 17th

I am pleased to say that we didn’t have another perfect storm this week.

After a lot of effort and fault-finding by our engineers it looks like the electrical fault on the Twin Otter has been solved. We’ve thought that in the past and it has recurred, so it’s not absolutely certain, but after several fault-free flying days we are optimistic.

One of the Caravans had a problem with an oil leak, which was finally tracked down to a propeller seal. Fortunately that didn’t take long to fix, but there was concern at one point that the aircraft could be out of the air for a while. Pilots don’t like oil leaks as they can lead to engine failures!

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This was a highly social week …

Dave & Karina Mills (Dave is the doctor at Kompiam hospital) and three of their children stayed with us over Monday and Tuesday nights. They were flying to Australia on Wednesday and had planned to drive into Mount Hagen to catch their flight. However, torrential rain over several nights caused four landslides along the road which made it impassable. Last Sunday night Dave called asking what we could do to help. As there was a Twin Otter passing close to Kompiam with plenty of room on board on Monday, it was quite an easy programme change to fit the extra landing in to collect them.

On Tuesday Dave & Karina took us out for a meal at “The Sweet Spot”, a restaurant just up the road from us that opened earlier this year. Previously it was called, “The Curry House” but that business closed and was taken over by the present owner, whose mother runs a trout fish farm on the slopes of Mount Wilhelm. I enjoyed a very nice smoked trout omelette, Nicki enjoyed stir-fried vegetables with mushrooms.

It was our turn to be on hospitality for visitors on Wednesday and had four guests for the evening meal. Actually, two weren’t visitors, but were residents without their wives for different reasons and who were very happy to be fed and watered.

Tom & Salome Hoey, accompanied by Norm Turtle who used to work for CRMF and was our next-door neighbour when we lived in Goroka, came through Hagen on Thursday on their way back to Australia. The Cessna Caravan had been scheduled to collect them, but because of the oil leak, the flight I was doing was diverted to pick them up. In the three weeks or so they’d been at Mougolu they’d repaired the 31 year-old hydro-electric plant and had it operational for the first time in over a year.

As it was Tom’s 87th birthday, and Salome’s 81st was three days before, we had a party for them that evening which both surprised and delighted them. Tom said that the first time he flew with MAF was 51 years ago, which is a record I doubt that anybody else still regularly visiting PNG can beat.

Friday gave us a chance to accept an invitation to eat with VP and Nimmi, a new couple to join us from India. VP is giving direction and impetus to our strategic planning. Both are doctors, but VP has been involved in the management of a large group of hospitals before he came to MAF. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised knowing the sort of work VP was doing, but he knows Kim Tan, a friend of mine from school days. Small world!

I should explain that VP is short for Varghese Philip, but he’s always called, VP. I should also add that it was a very nice meal, genuinely Indian.

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Yesterday, to recover from the social whirl, I did a 10km run, cut down and cut up a tree, trimmed the hedge and cut some timber for packing crates. Following all this physical exertion I collapsed into bed early with shoulders and upper arms complaining of abuse. Today has been rather gentler.

Another task we did yesterday was to put our Christmas tree up, though haven’t bothered with other decorations. It does at least remind us of the time of year even if the other cues are absent.

December 10th

Thursday was a Perfect Storm of a day.

• There was a prolonged power cut over Wednesday/Thursday night, and we arrived at work to find that there was a fault with the main generator. No lights and no telephones. Later in the day the standby IT generator failed, so all the main servers went offline, so no access to any of the main MAF information servers and no internet, no email. Of course, the loss of power also meant no printing, scanning or anything else requiring unimpeded flow of electrons.

• The weather was appalling; not a storm, but low cloud and rain over a widespread area of the country from a bit west of Mount Hagen and covering most of the east of the country. There were some important airstrip checks planned so that service can be resumed to communities which haven’t had an aircraft land since the C208 Caravan was introduced to the Sepik area. The delayed departure of the training pilot from Hagen jeopardised whether the checks would get done, especially as the aircraft to be used was scheduled for routine maintenance the next day.

• One of the Twin Otters has had a recurrent, but intermittent, electrical fault that Engineering is having all sorts of problems locating and correcting. The fault occurred again when the aircraft was at a remote airstrip. We all agreed that it wasn’t a safety issue and that the aircraft could fly back, but then the airstrip was covered by cloud and it couldn’t take off. Fortunately, when the cloud cleared the problem didn’t recur as the aircraft started up, so it did eventually arrive in Hagen for maintenance. The aircraft is still here as the problem has still not been located.

• After half a day the main generator was brought back online. As everything was switched back on the main uninterrupted power supply in IT blew up. The positive news was that it didn’t exactly blow up, and was later found to still be serviceable, but the electrical problems had caused a cable in the main building wiring to short out and produce some sparks.

• The Finance Manager went home sick.

• Court papers were served on MAF by a disgruntled ex-employee stating an intention to sue us and demanding his job back. His employment was terminated in 2006! Is there a Statute of Limitations here?

• In the evening, we heard that there was concern at the New Tribes centre, just east of Goroka and where several MAF children go to school. There had been an adults v children soccer game and the local landowner, who gifted the land to New Tribes for their centre, had dropped dead from a heart attack during the game. Needless to say it wasn’t pleasant for anybody and initially there was uncertainty about when some MAF youngsters would arrive home. There wasn’t any trouble and, fortunately, they arrived home safe and sound, just rather late.

I was reminded of the following:

I was sitting at work one day feeling rather glum. “Cheer up”, my colleagues said, “things could always be worse!” So, I took their advice and cheered up, and sure enough, things did get worse.

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My one day of flying this week was on Wednesday when I spent a very enjoyable and welcome day out of the office, following an Operations Team meeting all day Tuesday, and a Leadership Team meeting for half of Thursday (held outside in a covered communal area because it was too dark inside and the air conditioning wasn’t working due to the power cut).

The flight went from Hagen to Wewak and then to an airstrip we don’t go to very often called Nugwaia. Brad Venter, whom I was flying with, hadn’t been to Nugwaia in the Twin Otter before, so as it isn’t the easiest of airstrips, it gave me the chance to check him in there.

All in all it was a busy and demanding week.

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Yesterday I relaxed by cutting up sheets of plywood ready to start assembling some packing crates. In the evening we had a movie night with a full lounge of friends, watching “Lion”, based on a true story of a young boy in India who accidentally gets on a train and transported 1600km across the sub-continent. It’s well worth seeing.

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Christmas is approaching, decorations are up at work and in the shops (so I’m told, I haven’t been in any shop for a couple of weeks). Maybe if I finish this and another communication in time I’ll get our tree out. With snow in parts of the UK at the moment I expect the approaching celebration feels a bit more seasonal. In New Zealand a colleague was reminding me that their Christmas is associated with long summer days, the exact opposite of the UK (naturally since it’s on the opposite side of the planet!). In PNG the climate is much the same as always and there are no seasonal cues.

I’m very happy to miss the snow. It’s been cloudy all morning but is brightening up now and the temperature is in the mid-20s, Celsius that is! I can guarantee that we won’t have a white Christmas. Friends returning to Canada this week will be going back to a thick blanket of snow and snow ploughs out keeping the roads clear.

Have a good week. Drive carefully, as will we as we avoid over-developed potholes rather than ice.