Pay it forwards...

Lydia's mother is not well. We managed to get her to spend a couple of days at the mini clinic- where Lydia is the primary care giver.

 

Lydia is busy trying to establish any pertinent history related to her current conditions.

 

For the family it is a big thing to allow this lady to come for support in the non-traditional manner.

 

We will need to let her go back on Wednesday for market day, so we are against the clock to try to put her on the right course for recovery.

Time to tidy up...

The girls decided to take other sources of physical education seriously and so they wanted to do some

weeding exercise this morning around the their accommodation surroundings to make the place a lot more appropriate in order to keep snakes and other dangerous creatures away from the area.

Is very good that, the young ladies are taking initiatives in their chosen carrier to enable them become young professionals to help change the perception towards not educating girl children in this culture since girls are not given the same opportunities as boys gets. These ladies are becoming the pioneers of training of young ladies from rural Ghana.

Belly pob progress

The belly pod is coming on, the front aerodynamic shaping is rather becoming a very interesting concept.

Everyone working really hard to get it to the stage where it will be made available to other people who interested in developing one for their use to change lives.

We are currently working out the best way to brace the different parts in order to not compromise airflow over the oil radiator and the drop materials when being. dropped out.

EMT Training

Unexpected occurrences do happen, but how we respond to them when they happen, is the most important thing.

Everyone at the airfield is being trained for EMT(Emergency Medical Technician). This is to enable each individual be able to help render first aid service should the need arise.

Every week always ends with a scenario to keep the team prepared for a real case, meanwhile today's scenario was one that will definitely need revisited.


The ladies were given a situation which goes as follows;
A volunteer gentleman using the chainsaw and mistakenly got his arm cut with the saw and as a result fell straight to the ground helplessly in shock and with a potential head injury.

The ladies approached the scene and the first thing that happened was; everybody stopped and in first aid, thus
1. I am number one.
2. What happened to you?
3. BSI (Body Substance Isolation)
4.Are there any more?
5.Dead or alive?

They then emobilised his head put him in wheel chair and took him to the clinic in order to work on him easier since he has been working in the sun for a long time and perhaps is part of his panic, the clinic will keep him cool.

Direct pressure was applied to the wound to stop the bleeding and to help the blood clot quicker. the wound was then cleaned and covered. To start with, the victim's LoR was zero but by the time they had reassured and dressed his wounds, he was fine with LoR×4 ( meaning that; he knew his name, where he was, what time of day it was and what happened to him).

Vital signs were taken and a soap report prepared for handing over to a responsible physician.

In all the students performed brilliantly.

Maintenance time...

Maintenance is not a strength in this culture, it is not usual to come across machines that have never been maintained throughout their entire life.

Today, as the young ladies were working with our John Deere lawn mower, they noticed the warning for a fifty hour service. They then drove and packed the precious machine in front of the workshop ready for carrying out the service.

The different tools and required materials were nicely laid out for this important work. It was very encouraging to see that, the very first thing was; general cleaning on the machine, draining the old oil, changing the oil filter, removing and cleaning air filter, removing the mower deck, sharpening and re-balancing the blades and general inspection etc.

I watched carefully and worked with the youngsters and saw how passionate they were, about what they doing, the eye for detail and perhaps this is the stepping stone towards changing the mindset about the need for maintenance across our culture.

Pride

Taking pride in what one does is really essential in our part of the world since we are always operating in very hostile terrain, with equipments failing all the time due to the high humidity every day.

I see how hard these ladies work in order to make sure that, the tools are kept clean and in a cool place to improve on their life span.

It's a global initiative...

This year, we receiving many volunteers across the globe. In the past few months, we have had some of the volunteers from US, Germany, Austria, Ireland etc.

This week, our youngsters are benefiting from lot of Mr Onniberg's many experiences in Aviation since he is an instructor for airline pilots. He going through all the CBT DVD with ladies and explaining the very technical words.

Some of the topics includes principles of flight, stall recovering, atmosphere, weather amongst many others. He is also taking the time to prepare some short notes for them to help answer most of their questions that they are yet to ask.

Afram plains drop mission.

All the volunteers helped in preparing the drops for the Afram plains communities who came for the fly me day.

The young ladies in the AvTechacademy are now at the stage of being the drop masters for dropping to these communities.

We got airborne as early as 07:00am to communities 90km due north of Kpong airfield. The trip was done by two aeroplanes with the intention that, one plane will provide safety watch for the drop plane.
After about 45 minutes to an hour, we arrived at the target zone, a couple of passes was done to ensure it was a safe area for doing the drops.

Patricia being the Pilot and Lydia as drop master, several drops were metted out to the communities which had about seven different school present in order to receive the packages for their communities. After about four passes, the risk factors rose due to strong winds, thermal activities, cloud build ups and tiredness on the crew's part.

The location for the drops is very hostile so, requires lot of lookout and planing to ensure safe operations but all the same better than most drop zones in the past.

It was a very successful mission and is just the beginning of drops which will help change their lives, helping them to spread the health message across the rural areas.

Fly Me day and our first Afram Plains Drops.

Melissa Pemberton and the AvTech girls

This year's fly me day was a success and all children from the selected schools arrived on time. The team was very much prepared to receive the young enthusiasts.

On Sunday, the 10th of March 2013, fifty young ladies were brought in by the Volta Lake Transport ferry which purposely made a special sailing to the Afram plains in order to bring them for the fly me day where they were flown at the Kpong field facilities.

The students arrived early as planned and were all flown before noon. They were also shown the facilities at the airfield.

Some of them have already started purchasing entrance forms for the AvTech academy intake in August this year.

At the fly me day, they were told, there will be planes flying into their communities soon to do aerial supply drops containing health related educational drops.
Supply drops were made up by the MoM volunteers, we then set off this morning for the Afram plains to do first aerial drops to the communities we promised on the fly me day. Lydia was the drop master.

It's official...

We had an official visit from the Ghana education service, the ladies were very proud to show them, the facilities.

After the thorough inspection, the authorities were full of praises for the Academy and gave some words of encouragement to the ladies.

Each young lady in the school was able to explain to the visitors about the different aeroplanes we teach them to fly in at the airfield.

Flyme day 2013

Fly me day this year, starts on the Friday, the 8th and the 10th of March 2013. On the 8th, flying started from around 07:45 am.

The first group arrived at 07:00am all very enthusiastic awaiting their flights from the pilots that will be taking them up through the cool morning breeze that blows around the beautiful hills in the locality.

About twenty two were dispatched by the three young pioneers of the AvTech Academy ( Juliet, Emmanuella and Lydia) into their various planes, three at a time.

On Sunday, the 10th of March 2013, we are expecting about fifty determined and enthusiastic ladies from the Afram Plains who are potential intakes for AvTechacademy this September and will all be from communities being selected for aerial supply of health education material from medicine on the move.

Belly pod progress....

Finally, our bellypod has gotten to the stage where, we are able to offer up without having to reposition clecos, that are hindering smooth fitting on the belly of the plane, in order to see how the project is coming.

I was very pleased to see the youngsters in the workshop, working through all the different stages of the pod which is involving hard work and determination to enable good results which will help boost the drops of health related materials into the rural communities.

These ladies are looking forward to working in the coming few days, to completing the next stage of the pod for mounting onto the aircraft and its functionality for full demonstration.

Parlez-vous français

Is always an advantage to be bilingual especially, when you are surrounded by countries which speak very different languages to what is spoken in yours.

The students have started French lessons with Safiatou Diao, who is the WAASPS administrator.
Safi is enjoying teaching the young ladies all the knowledge that she has in French.

I walked onto the classroom this afternoon and saw how Safi felt, there was teaching and learning taking place rather than the teaching that takes place without any learning in many other learning centres.

Looking to the future

Our future leaders in the AvTech academy proposed to go to a local school this week, to educate other students about aviation.

One of the aims of visiting the school, is to make selection for the fly me day which is forth coming on Friday the 8th of March 2013.

The ladies set off after breakfast for the school for their presentation. Four hours later, they all came back with beaming smiles on their faces and when asked to explain their happiness, they said that, "the school children were very pleased with their teaching".

They further explained that, they taught to other people, their favorite topics like the four forces of flight, which are; lift, gravity, thrust and drag.

They then went on to teach them about the phonetic alphabets, the four cycles of a four stroke engine being; induction (suck), compression (squeeze), combustion (bang) and exhaust (blow).

At the end of the presentation, they were able to select twenty young people to come for the fly me day.

AE gets a new suit

Today was very important for the AvTechacademy girls.

They worked on AE today, towards her re-clothing after several months of awaiting her parts arriving from India.

The ladies were very determined to get her to the stage of receiving her new wing cloths and new covers on her other control surfaces which will put her back into service in a few days.

Time for the students to step up.

Wow! The students for the first time, were able to carry out a 100hours service on KT who just turned 700hours.

She is our conversion trainer and has flown over thirty different nationalities over the past years. KT is now looking forward to converting the AvTechacademy students's licences when they have completed their training on our basic trainers.
They took lots of details during the servicing and asked many vital questions which required vivid explanations.

The 100hour service entales general cleaning on the engine, changing oil, change oil filter, changing spark plugs, removal of magnetic plug for checking, cleaning the fuel gascolator etc.

These youngsters are in their second term, third year with one and a half years to go but are already very competent with most things that they are involved in working on, which helps with changing lives, sustainably for the best results.