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| Spectacular atmospherics. And the noisy road below... |
So…?! What’s the life of a missionary bush pilot like? Haha, I’m still wondering myself! The mammoth task of getting the first of our two planes back in the air still continues, and so far I’ve spent 2 1/2 months in Indonesia doing everything but flying. It’s been a blessing in disguise, however, as I’ve been afforded time to get everyday life figured out here, process through transition (pilots, the E in the IMSAFE acronym is a very real factor in flying), and be able to work on learning Bahasa.
Although I can’t say anything about the flying yet, I can talk about the more down-to-earth aspects of life here. Such as playing house! Figuring out how to set up my place was actually something I was dreading in coming here - like not knowing exactly what I would need to bring from the U.S., what things I could get here and where to find them. And then anticipating the process of getting settled in. But I managed, and just the other day I was realizing that I’d actually had a bit of fun in the process! The benefit of starting from scratch - I moved into an almost empty place - is that I could decide from the get-go what I really thought was essential to have in my house and then just get that. The end result has turned into a nice tidy place that is easy to keep from getting cluttered and has most of the functionality that I need in the way that I like it. I may decorate it a bit as time goes if I get the urge, but for now, I’m happy with my family photo fridge magnets and the wall map that I always gravitate toward.
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| More than just the fridge contents make me smile! |
Of course I do more than just putter around the house. I actually stay fairly busy helping out at the Adventist Aviation hangar with whatever projects need doing. I’ve gotten to know some particular aircraft components very well as I’ve helped in the process of overhauling them. Right now my work days typically run from 8:00 - 6:00, with an hour for lunch in between. Once we start flying, though, it’s going to get pretty busy. I’m told we take off at sunrise at 5:30 and do flights all the way until we come back to home base around 5:00 in the evening. That’ll mean getting to bed rather early in order to be ready to take off at dawn. I guess I got some good preparation for that by working the early shift at EVA FTA!
I’m probably not going to have as much trouble falling asleep so early as staying asleep though. To help you understand what I’m talking about requires a little explanation about the noise levels here. As you might have gathered from the previous entry, I’m not in an isolated jungle outpost, but rather on the outskirts of a sizeable town. The road leading out of town happens to run right by our runway and if you close your eyes and just listen, you’d think there was a major freeway running next to the airbase property. It’s just a small road, but traffic is constantly flowing by from the early hours of the morning till late at night. Then, in the wee hours of the morning when the traffic is finally just a trickle, you’ll hear the 4:00 a.m. call to prayer from several masjids echoing over the countryside from loudspeakers.
But just when you’ve gotten acclimated to the baseline noise levels, you discover that sources of noise are not limited to the frequent obnoxious revving of motorbikes with modified mufflers; there are a number of folks in the local population (not on campus) who have considerably powerful sound systems and seem to think the entire neighborhood wants to hear their particular playlist. Do they choose the daytime to broadcast the musical selections? I don’t think I’ve heard music in the day once yet—they usually fire things up no earlier than 9:00 p.m. and continue far into the night. Sometimes they’re considerate and wait until you’ve already fallen asleep before powering on the speakers. One time they got going at the prime hour of 2:30 a.m. Back home, it might just be a matter of shutting the windows (and calling the police, haha!). But here… well, we don’t have glass panes to speak of, but, rather, large screen windows and some flimsy glass slats that can be closed if there’s a driving rain getting things wet. So sound-proofing is non-existant.
Just a couple days ago I’d gotten to bed nice and early and was blissfully dead to the world until a driving beat woke me up just before midnight. Great. I put in my earplugs, but that just focused the sound. After turning both fans in my room to the highest speed for the maximum amount of white noise, I felt like I was in a veritable hurricane, yet I still could hear the dum, dum, dum, dum, dah, dah, boom, tish! Oh brother.
Sometimes when I show up to work at the hangar in the mornings, Simon will ask, “Lombart, did you sleep good last night?” to which I’ll chuckle, knowing he was treated to the same concert that I had. Right now it’s kind of hit and miss as to when the music plays at night. Lately it’s been fairly “quiet” but I’m told that as we approach the Christmas season, every street corner is going to have a boombox playing Christmas songs 24/7 at max volume. And when it comes to sleeping through noise, apparently it’s not even worth trying on New Year’s Eve; the fireworks will be going off constantly from sunset to midnight.
Housekeeping and noisy neighborhoods aside, where does this leave me in the timeline for getting airborne? I’m not going to make any hard and fast predictions, since most things take about 3x as long to accomplish here as expected. But… as of this writing, we’ve reached a major milestone with PK-TCA, and it now has two wings again like a proper airplane should! Tasks that still need accomplishing between now and flight day include, but are not limited to: rigging flight controls, weighing the aircraft (yep on some actual scales!), rigging the engine and then test running it, and getting the airworthiness certificate signed off by the DGCA. Looking at the long road the program has traveled, we’re almost there. So for your sake, you can hope that we’re up and flying soon so I can start writing about things more interesting than my gripes about the noisy neighbors! (Again, not referring to my colleagues on campus.) On that note, let me leave you with a few words of encouragement: "And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart." Galatians 5:6 NKJV.
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| Only a matter of time now... |
