Ye Olde E6B...

My dad gave me my E6B on my 16th birthday. I had recently started flying lessons and he knew that I was going to need it soon. For those of you not familiar with the E6B, it is probably one of the most common models of what they call a flight computer. Calling it a "Flight Computer" makes it sound fancier than it actually is. Mine is aluminum (but they are also very commonly made of plastic) and it is essentially a glorified slide rule. The number of tasks that one can accomplish using the E6B is really quite amazing I suppose. Time-distance-speed calculations, density altitude, true airspeed, Fahrenheit to Centigrade, Liters to Gallons, wind triangle problems, and a few more that I can't think of at the moment. It is an incredible tool and one that a pilot uses extensively in pilot training both as a student and an instructor. However, the effective and practical use of the E6B is probably a dying art given the advances in aircraft navigation systems. A modern GPS (Global Positioning System) or FMS (Flight Management System) can tell you everything an E6B can at the push of a button with unerring accuracy and speed. Given that, I figured that I had probably seen the last regular use of my E6B when I was hired as a pilot at Skyway back in '05. I brought it with to Africa because it seemed like something that I might need ocassionally but I never guessed that I would use it on every leg of every flight here. The DCA (Department of Civil Aviation) here requires that we keep and use a navigation log for every flight, not unlike the ones that I used as a private pilot. In addition, even if one has a GPS on board they require that there be an alternate manual means of making navigation calculations. It makes a great deal of sense really. As a flight instructor, I always made my students use their flight computers during cross country training even if the aircraft had a GPS, logically reasoning that you don't want to depend too heavily on one piece of technology to tell you where you are. If the GPS breaks you always need to a) know where you are and b) have an alternate means of calculating your navigation from that point. Enter the E6B. Every pilot here carries a flight computer with on every flight, whether it is an E6B or CR-5 or another version. I feel a little sheepish that as a professional pilot I had let my skills with the flight computer slide but it feels good to break the E6B out again and make use of it. Thanks Dad!

Another early morning....

I wake up to my phone buzzing on the bedside stand. "1 New Message" flashes across the screen. Pushing the button to view my message, I begin to read through my sleep-squinted eyes: "Sorry about the early call guys. We have a Kasane - Francistown. The patient has lost a lot of blood." Uggh, what time is it? I glance at the clock on my phone and read 3:27 AM. The airport doesn't open till 6 AM so I groggily text back: "Ok. We'll plan on being in the air between 0600 and 0630." I reset my alarm for 4:30 and try to fall back to sleep. Finally, after 45 minutes of tossing and turning, I finally succeed in dozing off only to dream that I sleep through the alarm and arrive at the airport an hour late. I jerk awake feeling mildly panicked and give up trying to fall back asleep. After a cup of strong coffee and some peanut butter and jelly toast I start to feel a little more awake. On the short drive to the airport I down another cup of coffee and start to feel even more human. The hangar is dark and empty when I arrive. I sit down to fill out the necessary preflight paperwork; the briefer at Flight Services sounds just as bleary eyed as I feel but he dutifully logs the flight plans that I read to him. Brian, my co-pilot, walks through the door a few minutes later and asks what still needs to be done yet. He leaves to do the only thing I hadn't yet completed: the preflight inspection on our airplane, MJM. Around 6:10 or so one of our two medics arrives and we load up. After waiting another 20 minutes the other medic finally speeds up to the hangar and jogs to the airplane. We all make the necessary snide remarks about his ability to tell time and then are on our way.

Two hours and 20 minutes later, after bucking moderate headwinds the whole way, the main wheel tires kiss the pavement in Kasane. As expected, the ambulance is waiting and they unload the patient. He is a large man in his 40s who has a bandage under his nose and blood on his face but otherwise appears uninjured. The medics quickly load and secure him and within 10 minutes we are taxiing back out. Now heading SE to Francistown, our headwinds from the way up become crosswinds so we don't make up any time - but at least we aren't losing more either. As we taxi to the loading area in Francistown the ambulance is waiting for us; within a few minutes of shutting the airplane down the patient and medics are on their way to the hospital. While waiting for our medics to return, Brian and I decide take some fuel. Just as we are fastening our fuel caps back into place the ambulance reappears with our medics. Perfect timing. As we are strapping in I turn and ask Shane, one of the medics, what was wrong with our patient. "He had a nosebleed". I snort and reply, "I could see that, but what else was wrong with him?" "Nothing" is Shane's reply. "They simply couldn't get it to stop bleeding and they were down to their last pint of blood at Kasane." I gape at Shane. He grins ruefully and says, "40% of the population has AIDS. Clean blood is hard to come by." I laugh at the craziness of it; we flew all the way across the country for a nosebleed. As we taxi out I reflect that it doesn't really matter what was wrong with the patient, without the job that FMS does people here could die from something as trivial as a nosebleed. I am glad to be a part of this.

Say again....?

"What did he say?" I asked. Ryan shook his head and said, "I don't know...all I got was that there is something crossing the runway." We were about 10 miles out of Kasane on a right base for runway 08. There are many things that are different about flying in Botswana and understanding ATC is one of the many challenges that we face. English is the official language of aviation and all of the controllers speak it but with varying degrees of accent. Some speak very clearly and others speak with a very heavy accent and far too quickly. This guy was one of the latter. "Ask him again", I requested. The controller's response to Ryan's inquiry was again fast and heavily accented but this time we were able to discern that there was a large group of some sort of animal moving across the runway from south to north and that we should keep a look out for them. As we rolled out on a four mile final I looked intently at the runway but couldn't see anything. "Do you see what he is talking about?" I asked Ryan. Again, a head shake and a "Nope". A moment later the controller solved the mystery with a surprisingly well enunciated transmission. "Mercy One, reccommend that you go around. There are still many baboons on and around the runway." Aha, baboons. As we got a little closer the the large troop of 30-40 baboons became visible as they loped across the runway. "Let him know that we are going to do a low pass to scare them off and then we'll go around and come back" I instructed. As Ryan did that I sucked up the gear and flaps and applied a little power while still maintaining a descent. I leveled at about 100 ft and pushed the engines up to full power as we approached the trespassing primates. However, the roar of the approaching airplane sent them scattering in all directions instead of clearing them off the runway as hoped. As we climbed out ATC advised that they were going to send out a truck to herd them off the runway and by the time we lined up for our second try we could see the entire troop disappearing into the woods on the north side of the airport in front of the airport's fire truck. Last week, it had been warthogs. Well, this sure isn't Wisconsin!

Just one of those mornings....

I had no idea what time it was as I stumbled through the dark to my phone only that it wasn't yet light outside. I looked at the caller ID...Bob P....the Managing Director. "Morning Bob", I managed to mumble into the phone. He chuckled at my grogginess and said, "We have a flight to Maun. They called at midnight but I figured I would let you sleep as long as possible." "That was nice of you...by the way what time is it anyway?" "5:20", came the reply. I have been very happy with the motorbike that I have been using to commute to work here but as I opened the door and stepped into an incredibly clear and cold predawn darkness, a vehicle with a heater sounded like a really great idea. And then, about half way through a very long, cold, and dark ride to the airport it occurred to me that the airplane needed gas. We had gotten back from South Africa the night before after dark, and Air BP has been refusing to fuel us after dark due to poor lighting conditions on our end of the ramp. By the time I arrived at the hangar the sky was lightening in the east so I thought I would give Air BP a call and see if they would come fuel us or if it was still too dark. I was pleased when they agreed to fuel us and said they would "be right there". However, apparently what they meant when they said they would "be right there"was that they would "be right there" after they fueled two or three of Air Botswana's airplanes. So, it was over an hour later before we were finally able to spin our engines and taxi out and I felt a real sense of relief at finally being on our way as the landing gear retracted into their wells. That relief lasted until, about 30 seconds later when Brian said "Whoa, look at that!" while indicating the right wing. Fuel was spewing out around the right main tank filler cap. The cap was on and appeared secure but apparently wasn't seated right since we were losing large quantities of fuel around the edges. "Oh crap" I sighed. "Tell the tower we need to return." 45 minutes later, with our lost fuel replaced and our caps all secure we finally lifted off to Maun. As we reached our cruising altitude of 20,000 ft I switched on the autopilot and grabbed the thermos. I was halfway through a cup of coffee and a breakfast bar and finally starting to relax when Brian said "Uh oh.", while staring out the right window. "Uh oh??" I inquired while trying to see around Brian's head to what had captured his attention. He leaned back and pointed to the nacelle tank cap which now had fuel streaming back from it. The quantity of fuel being lost was nothing compared to the first leak and being that we were half way between Gabs and Maun with no viable alternates available we reached the inevitable decision to continue to Maun. There is no way to tell how much fuel we lost on the way but upon arrival in Maun an inspection of the cap revealed that the sealing surface inside the filler neck was slightly bent. The mechanic was doubtful that that could have caused the leak but could find no other explanation. He replaced the cap and reccommended that we replace our fuel cap o-rings as soon as we got back to Gabs. From that point forward the day was thankfully uneventful but it'd been a heck of a morning.

Pictures...

Well, for those of you who are on Facebook these pictures aren't anything new but to everyone else you might not have seen these yet. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=26224&l=8ff06&id=658493576 Enjoy!

On call....

The view of out the side cockpit window of the King Air was of absolute blackness below, a spectacular field of stars above, and in between a vague silhouette of the wing and engine nacelle with a smudge of white hot exhaust blurring out of the inboard exhaust port. I was struck by the absolute blackness, the total absence of light in the Kalahari below. It was around 8pm and we were about half way between Gabs and Maun. I hadn't expected to get called out so late. My typical work day in Botswana has me going out to the airport around 9am or so. They don't want us their much earlier than that because as pilots we are limited to a 14 hour duty day whether we fly or not. So, if we get there too early and then a late call comes in for a Mercy Flight we might run out of duty time (or "turn into a pumpkin"). Yesterday morning I got to the hangar right around 9am and I spent most of the morning puttering on the motorcycle (having trouble getting the blinkers to work reliably) and then ate lunch. After lunch, I left briefly to look at furniture with Alysa and on returning spent some surfing the internet. At around 4pm, everyone was packing up for the day so I fired up the bike and headed home (blinkers working at least for the moment). I got home around 4:20 or so and I helped Alysa do the dishes. We we just discussing what to do for supper when the phone rang. It was Mark, the Director of Operations and we had an urgent call from Maun. I grabbed my bag and some snacks to bring along in lieu of supper and was heading out the door when my phone rang again. This time it was Brian, the first officer and he wanted to remind me to bring an overnight bag just in case we couldn't get home that night. I rushed back into the house and threw some clothes and a toothbrush into a bag just as Brian roared up in front of the house (he lives right down the road here in Phakalane). I hopped in and off we went. On the way in I called Briefing (the Botswanan equivalent of FSS) and filed flight plans from Gabs to Maun, Maun to Francistown, and Francistown back to Gabs. When I got to the Francistown to Gabs leg the briefer immediately questioned whether we had made arrangements to keep the tower open as we would be back after the field closes for the night. I told him that I wasn't sure what the plan was for our last leg but I wanted the flight plan on file anyway. When we arrived at the airport Brian headed out to the airplane to preflight while I got the paperwork together. About the time that we were ready the paramedics showed up and climbed aboard and we were off. When we were about 90 miles south, the lights of Maun appeared on the horizon and as we came up on town, we started looking for the airport. I had never been to Maun after dark so I wasn't much use and for whatever reason they don't put beacons on their airports here, even if they have lit runways. Anyone who has flown at night into a city airport knows that even if you know where the airport is it is devilishly hard to see the runway unless you are more or less lined up with it, so I had to have Brian (who knew where the field was) talk me onto a base before I finally spotted the field. The ambulance was waiting for us on the ramp at Maun and before the props had even stopped spinning began backing up the the airplane. A nurse got out of the ambulance holding a blanket and was followed by a young African woman in a hospital gown. It took me a moment to realize that the young woman was not the patient but the real patient was the smallest baby I have ever seen, wrapped in the blanket carried by the nurse. Immediately the paramedics but an oxygen mask on the baby who was very premature and suffering from respiratory distress. While they got settled, I got on the phone with Mark. We were not going to make it back to Gabs before the airport closed so he informed me that he had arranged a hotel for the four of us in Francistown. As soon as mom and baby were settled into the back we spun the engines and were off to Francistown. Upon arrival in Francistown, an ambulance met us and while they got mom and baby settled, Brian and I secured the airplane. Then we all piled into the ambulance and took off, lights and sirens to the hospital. When we arrived at the hospital, Brian and I stayed in the ambulance while the driver and the paramedics brought mom and baby inside. And then we waited. And waited. About 45 minutes later the paramedics and driver returned and when I inquired as to the delay the paramedic informed me casually that just after getting into the hospital the baby had stopped breathing but they had managed to resuscitate and stabilize her. When I asked if she would make it, the paramedic shrugged and said that if she made it through the night she would stand a good chance. I doubt I will ever know if she ultimately lived or died but what is certain is that without our late night airplane ride she would have died in Maun. It feels good to be a part of that.

My license...

My Botswanan License next to my US "Credit Card" License

The First Page of my Botswanan License

I thought I would post some pictures of my Botswana Pilot's License just because it is so different. The inside is a dozen pages or so with my various ratings and endorsements.

The first medical flying....

Well, this last week has been an eventful one. My Botswanan license was approved by the DCA and issued. Naturally, it was issued as a Commercial Pilot's license and not an Airline Transport Pilot's license so it had to be sent back and reprinted but in any case I got my first taste of flying the line here in Botswana. On Tuesday morning we got a call from the Maun hospital. They had a patient with a ruptured appendix that needed to be transported to the Francistown hospital. I headed out to the aircraft to pull the covers and do the preflight inspection while the other pilot filed the flight plans and got our paperwork ready. At the same time the flight coordinater was calling the paramedics and arranging ambulance transport on both ends. As soon as the paramedics arrived we closed the doors, started the engines, and blasted off towards Maun. Maun is roughly an hour and a half away so once we were in the air, the paramedics promptly fell asleep and we settled in for the flight. On arrival in Maun, the ambulance was waiting with a surprise...a second patient! I never caught exactly what was wrong with the second guy but in the end we were only able to take the appendix case since we only have room for one stretcher on board. (There was discussion of us going back for the second patient once we had dropped the first off in Francistown but the Maun hospital eventually decided he wasn't critical enough to justify another trip.) So, from there we flew to Francistown and dropped off patient #1. The paramedics needed to accompany the patient to the hospital so Dan (the other pilot) and I fueled the aircraft and then wandered over to the tiny terminal to see if there was any food to be had. We got the very last of what the lunch lady had left...beef, rice, beets, and coleslaw. Quite a meal for 15pula (about $2.25). Dan got his food first and headed back to the aircraft to eat while I waited a few minutes for mine. Finally, I got my food and headed back to the aircraft to enjoy. When I got there, Dan eyed my styrofoam container and asked, "Is that still hot?" I replied that it was and he said with a smile "Then you better hurry up and eat it. The fat coagulates when it gets cool." I snapped open my lid and satisfied that it hadn't coagulated yet ate a very tasty if not a little greasy meal. About the time I was finishing my last forkfuls the ambulance reappeared with the paramedics who looked a little annoyed that we had gotten food and they had not. However, even if the lunch lady had had more food we didn't have time to wait. The paramedics informed us that there was a patient in Gaborone that needed transport to Johannesburg. So, we fired up and head back to Gaborone. On arrival there, we called for fuel while we went to the terminal to clear customs. By the time we returned, the aircraft had been fueled and the paramedics were loading the patient, a South African motocross racer who had badly broken a leg in a race in Botswana. As soon as he was loaded, we were off again...this time to the Lanseria airport in the Johannesburg area. I found that flying into South Africa wasn't very hard until it came to the mountains of paperwork. On arrival in Lanseria, we headed into Customs and Immigration. Both Customs and Immigration had a fairly substantial form that had to be filled out in duplicate for both entry and exit. (Someone should tell them about carbon paper!) In any case, with the paperwork finished and the patient safely in his ambulance and on his way to a South African hospital we were able to turn around and head home. It had been a very long but enlightening day.

And now we wait....again....

Well, the word right now is that I will have my Botswanan licenses on Monday. Hopefully, I will be able to get my airport badges at the same time. Once those pieces are in place I will be able to start earning my keep here. However, even once I get my licenses I still will not be able to fly as a captain here until I am able to complete an instrument flying check. In order to complete that check I have to fly an ILS approach (instrument landing system) and as it happens the only ILS in the whole country is out of service at least until the middle of this coming week. Oh well, things have still come together for me much faster than people have expected anyway so I am still a little ahead of the curve. In any case, I can fly as a first officer once I get the licenses and what I really need at this point isn't so much practice flying the airplane as it is practice with the air traffic controllers (who are very hard to understand) and work within the ATC system here. So, left seat...right seat...it doesn't really matter. I'll still be gaining that experience. Hopefully, this next week will bring stories of my first air ambulance flying in Africa! We'll see.

When it rains it pours....

"Elephants, two o'clock!" I called out. Tim said "Are you sure? Oh yeah...there they are." Then he simultaneously rolled the aircraft sharply to the right and yelled over his shoulder "Elephants!!", while indicating the right side of the airplane. Our passengers crowded the right side windows while we swept over the pair of giant animals at a mere 500ft and 160 knots. The bull flapped his ears and whirled to face us as the cow fled into the bush and then we were gone. On Monday afternoon Tim had asked if I would like to accompany him on a charter in the morning. I am not yet formally licensed here so it was to be a trip more for my own orientation than for me to serve as a meaningful crewmember but being anxious to see how things really work here I naturally accepted. The trip in our King Air was chartered by an oil and gas company that had recently leased some huge tracts of land from the government for exploration and wanted to get a feel for the immense size of their holdings. We met at the airport at 5:30am and waited for the clients who finally showed up around 6:45am. Then we flew a normal leg from Gaborone to Maun where we landed for fuel. Upon taking off from Maun we leveled at 500 ft above the ground and flew northeast towards Kasane, then when we reached the boundary of Chobe National Park we turned and flew towards the massive salt flats of Nie Pans. After reaching the salt flats we wheeled again to the northeast and flew directly to the Zimbabwean border where we turned and flew southwest along the border. When we reach the small village of Nata we flew an additional 45km to a remote station where the gas company was doing exploratory drilling and did a few low level turns around their small drill rig and crew. Then we climbed out to a more reasonable cruise altitude and flew to Francistown for fuel and then on to Gaborone. All in all we flew for just over 6 hours, a full half of which was a mere 500ft above the ground. It was an incredible experience for someone new to the country and I got a feel for the massive uninhabited spaces that exist in here. We flew for hundreds of miles over mmopane forest and savanna seeing nothing but elephants, giraffes, water buffalo, and zebra. The only sign of human habitation at all was the occasional two rut dirt trail through the bush and boundary fences at the edges of the national parks. For three hours of low level flying we did not see a single human being on the ground. This flight was my third since my instructional flights last Thursday. On Sunday I rode along in FMS's Cessna 207 as it was flown to South Africa for maintenance. We flew into Krueger, South Africa where we cleared customs and then to White River, a small private strip. There we dropped off our 207 and picked up a loaner aircraft for use while ours was being worked on. The runway at White River was 1500ft long and one way due to a significant slope. It was perfect for the 207 and real fun to fly in and out of, even if I wasn't at the controls. It was a delightful flight over some simply magnificent terrain if not a little on the longish side being nearly 7 hours there and back. On Monday, I took my checkride with the chief pilot in our King Air. I thought it went pretty well given that I had a grand total of 2 hours in the airplane prior to the ride. However, I did learn the hard way that the C90 does not have the surplus power that the 1900 had. There can be absolutely no delay in retracting gear and flaps single engine the in C90...or it simply won't maintain altitude. At any rate, I passed the checkride and as of an hour ago all of my paperwork has been submitted for my Botswanan licenses. Hopefully, by the end of the week or early next week I'll be fully licensed and flying actual revenue flights! I'll post pictures of my flight to South Africa later today. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera for the flight in the King Air. :-(

Back in the air at last....

Well, today the waiting ended and I actually got to fly again! What a good feeling. I came in a little earlier than usual this morning and spend some time with the chief pilot, Tim talking through profiles and checklist procedures. Then it was actually time to take to the air with Dan, the company safety pilot. On the first flight we simply took off and flew around in the practice area to the north of Gaborone and did some visual maneuvers. I admit I expected the C90 to be very similar to the 1900 but it really just wasn't. For one, checklist and cockpit procedures are a lot less regimented than they were at the airline and I have to admit without strict procedure to follow I felt a bit lost. And then there is the airplane. I suppose being fully half the weight of the 1900 I should have expected it to fly a little different but it was very surprising for me to see how light and responsive it really was. I had a lot of trouble initially with over-controlling and over-trimming the airplane. It took a while for me to realize that this airplane simply did not need the large amount of control force or travel to make it do what I wanted. And even then it was one thing to know what I was doing wrong and another to retrain my hands and feet from three years of 1900 flying. However, given all of that I guess I performed acceptably well because we did a second flight this afternoon that was all instrument training. I was a bit surprised that I felt more comfortable under the hood but I definitely did. We went again to the practice area and did some instrument air work and then returned to Gaborone for a couple approaches. We initially flew the full ILS to runway 08 at Gabs including the procedure turn. However, procedure turn inbound we discovered that the glideslope was out of service. We quickly rebriefed the approach for localizer only and continued the approach. After executing the missed approach we requested vectors back around for another try. However, as we intercepted the localizer on the second approach Dan reached up, retarded the right engine to idle, and announced that I had lost an engine. I quickly ran through the steps to secure the engine and continued the approach. It wasn't perfect but again, it must have been acceptable because upon reaching MDA Dan told me I could look up and there was the runway...right where it was supposed to be! We continued the approach to a landing and that was the end of my flying for the day. I think that they are going to try to do the Botswana equivalent of a part 135 check in the next couple of days for me and then I should be able to apply for a license here. Then, once our residence permits come through (should be sometime next week) I will actually be able to begin flying on revenue operations for Flying Mission!

Hurry up and wait....

Well, the last few days have been pretty uneventful. With the Air Law exam out of the way (which I did pass, as I hoped, with room to spare) I spent the last day or so completing the remaining in-house exams. With those exams completed, there isn't much to do until they are ready to start flight training for me. However, I don't get the feeling they are racing to get me finished with my flight training since even if they were to get me done in the next couple of days and licensed, I still can't fly for them until I have a residence/work permit. That could easily take another few weeks. I have continued to go the airport every day though. I have spent a lot of time reading the manual for the aircraft and sitting in the cockpit mentally flying through the manuevers that I am going to have to do in training. It has been good time but slow. I guess this is what they mean when they say "Africa time"....everything takes a little longer than one would think that it should.

Starting out...

Well, we have been here exactly two weeks as of this morning and things are starting to get a little busier now. The first week here there really wasn't much to do. I think FM just wanted to give us some time to settle in. It was actually a very nice time to sit back and relax and get used to getting around the city a bit. However, this past Monday morning it was time for me to get down to business and start work on the license conversion process. Getting my licenses converted is essential to all of the rest of the paperwork that we have to get done. Without being licensed in Botswana, I can't get a residence permit, and without a residence permit I can't get a work permit. Additionally, without a residence permit we can't sign a lease, register a vehicle, open a bank account, or any one of a hundred other little things that we are going to need to do. The first step in the license conversion process is to take the Air Law exam. This is basiclly a test on the Botswanan FARs. That doesn't sound so bad until you see their FARs. It is one thing to read something that is written in legal-ease but when it is written in legal-ease in another country....it is that much harder to understand. Now, even that wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the organization...or compelete lack of it...in their FAR book. It didn't even have an index so looking things up by keywords was out of the question. All in all this would have been a very difficult exam to study for adequately except that FM has had many pilots take this exam over the years and they had a very good idea of what was going to be on it. Given that they had developed a study guide that covered the exam well. I recieved the study guide on Monday and I took this exam this past Thursday. I would guess that I invested 8-10 hours of study time prior to taking the exam and I thought it went really well. Of course, I haven't recieved the results yet but I would be very very surprised if I didn't pass with room to spare. So, the next step involves taking a number of in-house exams. The nice thing about these exams is that are all open book and are intended more as teaching tools than tests. There is test on C90 (King Air) limits and systems, a short one on Botswana Air Law, one on the Botswana Aeronautical Information Publication (Basiclly, a very expanded airport facilities directory), and one on FMS's operation policies. Once the written exams are out of the way we will begin flight training. This will involve a number of training flights in the King Air and eventually a flight test with one of FMS's designated examiners. Supposedly, upon completion of the flight test I should be granted a Botswana license. Hopefully, we can start and maybe even finish the flight portion sometime next week. So far so good!

Getting here...

Well, for those of you who don't know, this is really the second of two blogs that Alysa and I are writing about our time in Africa. The first is more general and we talk a bit more about the missionary side of what we are doing here (www.jonandalysa.blogspot.com) but I also wanted to publish something that dealt in a much more focused manner on the realities of flying airplanes in Africa. For those who aren't familiar with Alysa and I and what we are doing, I'll give a brief update. In March of this past year we decided to come of Botswana to work with an organization called Flying Mission. Flying Mission is a Christian organization that works in both Botswana and Zambia. It orginally started as a medical mission that used aircraft to get to the remote regions of Botswana to provide much needed medical care. As the years have gone by and the infrastructure of Botswana has improved the need for aircraft in this role has decreased and Flying Mission has changed with the times. Now, the greater organization deals much more with HIV/AIDS care, prevention, and orphan care. However, they still operate the aviation side under the name Flying Mission Services. FMS provides air ambulance service for the government of Botswana and on demand charter operations out of the capitol city of Gaborone and Maun, the center of the booming wildlife tourism industry. FMS is operated as a for profit company but the proceeds of the commercial flying go to subsidize whatever church flying comes up and ultimately the ministries of the greater Flying Mission organization. Flying Mission currently operates 2 King Air 90s out of Gaborone primarily for the Air Ambulance flying and a single Cessna 206 out of Maun for the charter flying to safari camps in the Okavanga River Delta. They are actively looking to aquire at least another 206 and possibly a Cessna Caravan to further meet their needs in the Delta. I was invited to Botswana primarly to fly the King Air for the medical contract. My most recent experience was flying and training other pilots in the Beechcraft 1900. Being that the 1900 is simply a very large King Air one would hope the transition would be fairly simple. I guess we are going to find out.