My Diary
06.00 Up, wash & coffee. Praise CD on
06.30 Breakfast for our 6 year old daughter, Raisha.
07.00 Trip to the garden to check leaks in the main water pipe that were repaired yesterday. Surprise! They are still there. Talk to the gardener, the tomato plants are diseased, is there any treatment available for them?
07.30 Leaving for work I see that our goats (our eco-friendly lawnmowers) have been tethered (by the Gardener?) so that they
can eat the bougainvillea bushes for breakfast. Stella (the Gardener) spends so much time trimming these – I’m confused before the day starts.
08.00 Devotions.
08.30 See the Computer Dept re Priscilla’s (the Base Ops Manager) PC. The e-mail preview is not working which makes life a little more difficult in keeping track of the numerous e-mail messages received during the day.
09.00 Search the Tanzanian Civil Aviation Authority’s (TCAA) web site for the listing of two airstrips that were recently closed without notification.
09.30 Investigate the fuel stock level in Mbeya, one of the southern airstrips. 2,200 litres of Jet A1 fuel was reported as 0.0 litres. The fuel had reached its expiry date & BP are being requested for revalidation.
10.00 Search for contact details of the organisers of the Mbeya Safari, planned for this week, but cancelled as a result of the closure.
10.30 Write letter of apology to recipients of bluntly worded message from a member of the Ops team. There was no intention to offend, just an unfortunate use of language.
11.00 Discuss the organisation of pilot MR’s annual medical. Discuss agenda items for Pilot’s/Ops meeting scheduled for Friday 24th Oct.
11.30 Meeting with Chief Engineer Re. new ‘Release for Operations’ procedure that needs to be implemented to comply with procedures.
12.00 Draft procedure written for above. Agree to reschedule a Base Check for pilot SS. Pilots have to complete successfully two of these check flights each year. The Caravan aircraft originally scheduled to be used for this flight will now be in Dar es Salaam, but the pilot requiring the check flight will be in Dodoma. MAF Tanzania have a second Caravan aircraft which is currently grounded for maintenance. By negotiation with Engineering it looks as though the second Caravan will be available for this flight.
12.30 Outline procedure completed and circulated. Completed and sent letter of apology started at 10.30.
13.00 Checked with TCAA (via Dar office) for the issue of Certificates of Airworthiness for two of our aircraft 5H-OPE and 5H-MWA. These Certificates have to be renewed every year and aircraft are not legally permitted to fly without a current Certificate on board. We are told that the TCAA have not been able to issue these Certs as they have problems with their typewriter. Try again tomorrow. Also checked with the TCAA for the issue of Certificates for Dabia and Kapenta airstrips. Dabia is a new airstrip, completed by our Airfield Development Team, for which a Licence must be obtained before it can be used. Kapenta is an existing airstrip for which the licence must be renewed every two years. The purpose of developing and maintaining these airstrips is to provide access for medical teams to communities that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to reach by other means.
13.30 Discussion of hospitality arrangements for the Fellowship Day planned for Saturday 25th Oct. All pilots will be coming to Dodoma for the Pilot’s meeting scheduled for Friday 24th and a Day of Fellowship has been planned for the following day. Accommodation and meals need to be organised for their visit. The Fellowship Day has been planned to replace our normal Annual Conference and is a response to the need to reduce expenditure where ever possible.
14.00 Flight planning for the coming week – agreeing travel and hospitality.
Clearing queries from the September Monthly Report. MAF use planning software for flights called ‘Wingman’. Like many bespoke computer programmes, it generates love/hate relationships in its users. The Monthly Report generated by Wingman cannot be ‘closed’ until the queries have been resolved.
Just another of those fun little tasks to prevent us from becoming bored.
15.00 Received confirmation the TCAA have issued C’s of A for PE & WA – now all we need is scanned copies!
Tidying odd ends of travel for the weekend.
15.30 More correspondence re fuel stocks. Further configuration of Priscilla’s PC.
16.00 Reading FliSafe incident report.
Enquiries and discussion regarding global satellite location and communication system.
16.30 Expediting and distributing the scanned copies of C’s of A for PE & WA.
17.00 Power down the Hangar and test the HF radios. Communication with our aircraft is by HF radio. The level of background noise, interference and static makes communication with the aircraft difficult and the noise environment of the Operations Room unpleasant, to put it mildly. We wanted to identify if any of the noise/interference was being generated from electrical systems and equipment within the hangar. By turning the power to the hangar off and assessing the level of change in the noise, absolutely none, we were able to eliminate this as a contributor to the problem. Aerial arrays next??
18.00 Travel home – buy pineapples and Papaya from the market on the way. Arrive home at 18.25
18.30 Evening meal.
19.00 – 20.00 ‘Family time’ Reading and homework with Raisha, followed by card games (Go Fish and Pairs) and Snakes and Ladders. Bath, Bed & Bible story for R. She must keep a mental check list of what she has, or has not, had during the day. ‘Lights out’ is accompanied by, ‘Dad, I haven’t had ‘this’, or I haven’t had ‘that’ but eventually get to the end of the list and sleep comes.
21.00 Time for Yvonne & I to tidy loose ends of work. For Yvonne, this means marking and/or preparation for the following day. For me, things that didn’t get done today, music preparation for church etc.
21.30 Time for bed – we seldom achieve it.
22.00 Our personal time together to relax, read, watch a film. There are not enough hours in the day