Safety training..

This is the second week of term for the new ladies at the avtech academy. So the second week brought with it the need for safety training.

 

The day started with what would happen if someone stands in a maneuvering area of an aircraft whilst operation is going on.
Then the demonstration with water melon being hit by the wings of an aircraft to simulate what would happen if a human being should get hit by an aircraft.

 

Two 2*6 were strapped onto the back of our K2700 truck representing the wings of an aircraft. The Kia drove at 60km/hr, hit the melon which got minced up and the shock on the faces of the young ladies was spectacular.

 

Painting by the numbers

 Today the ladies all had the chance to learn about spraying from Lydia who is our best sprayer.

She took them through safety briefing and procedures concerning paint work. Lydia also taught them about the prep aspects and the fact that the actual spraying is a little part of it all but the preparation is the biggest and most important part of the spraying.

 

It is very essential that, these ladies understand the importance of learning to spray because in our part of the world, where everything rusts so quickly, there is the need to get them painted very early on before they rust and become difficult to work with.

 

 

RoboPat....

Monika and Petra are with Medicine on the Move and Avtech for the next few weeks. They are filming the preparation and surgery for Lydia who will soon be heading to Germany for hand surgery.

 Patricia could not resist trying out the camera rig that Petra usually has surgically attached to her body.

Hopefully we will be able to share some of the stories that our European volunteers are putting together, not only on Lydia but also following the progress of the new intake of young ladies from rural Ghana in training.

Simple, life saving navigation skills. Class two, put to the test.

The young ladies today were given a map and blindfolded then driven around to a location where they don't recognise the terrain.

They then had to navigate their way back to the airfield using the maps given to them. It was very interesting seeing how they all worked as a team and moved as one body being each other's watch to trek through the bush safely to the airfield.

Eventually, they used the features around them and used all sorts of techniques such as climbing trees, standing on rocks to see x, y or z in the. Mu distance. They then saw the airfield from afar and runned towards.

This is no different to navigating by plane to a particular place and towards the end of the navigation, the pilot sees an obvious feature in a distance and aims for that object.

In the afternoon, they were introduced to handling metal work such as sanding and prepping it for painting.

Listen and learn... communicate and stay safe... Simple, Critical skills

When a new batch of apprentices starts at the academy, it is very important to get them to respond to commands to assess their their ability to follow simple instructions.

Most of the repair work we do on the aeroplane is such that, when a person is holding a plane up for the undercarriage to be changed, they cannot just drop it when tired.

The ladies all went through the stress test to determine the point at which they need helped.

New Term ... New Faces... Getting ready

This weekend 12 new girls are scheduled to arrive on site for training.  A long overdue set of drying lines are currently being made - in house of course - to make washing days less stressful, and they look as if they may even be airworthy!

Gaining the skills to succeed

Part of the Avtech girls training includes learning to weld. Patricia is getting in some practice for term starting next week.