Horse Power!

           Well as you probably already know by now we have moved on to the power-plant portion of my course here at SMAT.  We have been and will be studying through different course topics relating to aircraft engines.  One of the larger sub courses is reciprocating engines which powers most of the general aviation fleet.  In teams of 2 and 3 we are "carefully disassembling" various common aircraft power-plants (Lycoming & Continental).  My group has been corrected a couple times by our instructor that we are not tearing apart our engine but rather "carefully dissembling" :-).  My group has been given an IO-470 Continental engine to work on.  This engine is very similar to the IO-520's and IO-550's which are found in the Cessna 206's which makes up a large part of the MAF fleet.  Working with my teammates has been a lot of fun as well.  My teammates introduced me to the "Just look at it" video's online the other day as this has become our group's catch phrase.  Our engine is missing quite a few pieces even before we started.  We have since learned that this engine has been put together from a hodgepodge of parts which will add some challenge to the project as we will need to continue to search for more parts or steal them from our neighbor's table ;-).  This aspect of the project is not real life in engine repair and overhaul but it will give us good experience researching parts and checking their compatibly which I anticipate being the hard part of the project anyway.  The pulling wrenches part will be the easy part on this project I think.  The following are a few snapshots of our progress so far with our engine.

"For such a time as this"

For the last nine weeks I (Julie) have lead a wonderful group of ladies through the book of Ester as part of the bible study done by Beth Moore.  It was a wonderful time of learning, stretching, and great times of growth as we journeyed through the study.  I took great encouragement from how God could take a woman and her faith in her God and allow her the strength to save her people the Jews.  Beth Moore talked about how we all as believers have a "such a time as this" moment like Ester that God is preparing us for.  And that God has put us in that moment "for such a time as this" to do His will and bring Him glory.  As I am traveling through this journey with my savior it brings me great comfort that He is leading me and preparing me for what He has head of me to accomplish.

Another thing that God has really been teaching me during our time here in Michigan is to truly take the time to see the blessings that He has given me (especially through out those busy days). And over the past two weeks we have really seen some amazing blessings among some very busy times.  A huge blessing is that Greg PASTED his airframe exam and now holds a airframe licence!!!!  The kids and I are so proud of all his hard work and I am thankful that I didn't mess him up at all since I was his study partner most nights (most nights that I helped him I really had no clue what I was asking him or how to say half the words).  Now the rest of his course is focused on the different types of engines.  The very next day after Greg passed his exam we had a house full of people as my younger brother had his college graduation ceremony and my parents and grandmother came for the weekend.  I think that all we did that weekend was eat and celebrate!  And then a day after my brothers ceremony he moved in with us and will probably be with us the rest of our time her in Michigan.  Know my question is what am I going to do with a 22 year old in my house??  Actually, I feel truly blessed to have this time with my brother before I head overseas and he moves on with his life.  It truly feels like a very precious moment in time!  And then this coming weekend we are preparing to have the chance to connect with a couple who we met during our travels last year.  I feel completely overwhelmed (in a good way) of the blessing that God has given me in the last two weeks!  All I can think how to end this blog is WHAT A AWESOME GOD WE SERVE!

Springtime In Michigan

        Spring has arrived here in Michigan!  This has been a wonderful time for our family as we are not use to having spring this early or to have it arrive this warm.  We are finding it really strange that we have now being mowing our lawns for about four weeks now and friends and family in Canada are still getting snow.  Definitely this is something that we could get use to! Along with this wonderful weather our family have found spring to be a very busy and fun time.  Between school, studying, bible studies, preparing sermons, visiting churches, and yard work we are having a blast.  Isn't it amazing how much fun you can having serving the Lord thorough so many different ways.  Here are some pictures of what we have been up to over the past month and a half.

This is Jaclynn standing in our backyard in the middle of March.  Who would of thought we would be having two weeks of 85 to 88 degree weather!

Greg sharing an update on our family and then sharing the word of God with one of our supporting Churches at the end of March.

A wonderful supporting church that we had the great privilege visiting in March.           

For spring break the kids and Julie spent time with my family is southern Michigan.  So her is Jaclynn enjoying time with her aunt!

The park had an Easter egg hunt for different age groups so here is Isaac waiting for the horn to blow.  Each group had around 60 kids looking for eggs so it was pretty crazy.

With having only one vehicle sometimes there is some waiting involved.  Here we have Isaac and Jaclynn resting after riding their bikes at the airport while we wait for Greg to return from a flight.

Finally,  here comes Greg in for a landing after having a great Saturday morning flight!
In my defense I was a few minutes late but they did show up early as well:-)

  This is the wonderful church that we have been attending while in Michigan.

Jaclynn with some of her Sunday school class on Easter morning as they sang a song and read a poem for the whole church.

Isaac and Franklin sang with a choir on Easter morning and sang two beautiful songs.  I was a little worried as they had Isaac stand right in front of the microphone. Thankfully, he was to busy with remembering the words to do something silly in front of the whole church.

The children in the Easter morning attire.  Notice that both our boys are in ties.  This has been there latest grown-up purchase which means that poor daddy wears a tie most Sunday's so he can keep up with the boys.

This is how my children normally pose for a picture!

Most evening you will find Greg and I hitting his text books as he will be taking his air frame license exam at the end of April.

                                     

      Thank you for keeping our family in your prayers as our remaining four months in Michigan are starting to look very busy.  As we wrap up the ladies bible study over the next few weeks, I have the privilege of jumping right into working with a team from our church as we prepare for VBS at the end of June.  Greg also has many different exams to take along with his daily classes plus he has a couple trips possibly.  One is still up in the air as he is looking at traveling to Canada briefly to write a couple written exams to upgrade his Canadian pilots licence.  And the other one is to Nampa, Idaho which is booked for the first week in July for another flight evaluation for MAF.  All three children have about a month and a half left until they are on summer vacation.  Then comes the most stressful and busy time of packing up and saying good-bye to all our new friends here in Michigan and heading to a new place.  At the end of August we will hopefully have the country that they are planning to send us to decided and the time table for our remaining time here finallized.  As well our family still needs to raise the remaining 12% ($792) of our monthly support that is still needed before we head oversea's.  Thank you to all our faithful friends, family, pray partners, and supporters.  You guys are wonderful and we are so blessed to have you in our lives!

Blessings

Certificates

As I have been working on getting a US Airframe & Powerplant Certificate I have also been spending some of my extra time jumping through the hops of getting a US Commercial Pilot Certificate with an Instrument rating.  Which has involved a couple written exams and what seems to be a lot of paperwork.  The paperwork may have been a lot less if I had of just filled the forms out error free the firs time ;-).  Now that this is out of the way I'm starting preparation for my first round of oral and practical exams that coincide with the general written exam I took last fall and the airframe written that I have scheduled on the 24th of April.  Once these are complete I will be halfway there so to speak as I will have the A portion of the final goal for the A&P Certificate.  I have attached a few recent pictures of the different projects I have been working on in class. 

First up is the alternator project that we each were given.  I forgot to take a before picture but there was a couple left untouched which gives a good idea of what my started out looking like.  Yes they are car alternators but they function pretty much the same as airplane alts. 

Here is the first picture on my project specifically, at this point I have disassembled cleaned with mineral spirits and started to bead blast the case. 

At this point all the cleaning is done and the testing of the winding's is complete, and the first coat of paint has been applied. 

Someone leaving parts from their project behind on my work space.  A nasty trick if someone wasn't paying attention and later tries to figure out where this extra piece was suppose to go.  

Painting finished and getting ready to reassemble, and put on the bench tester.

 Project complete and pasted the bench test.  I wouldn't however want to put this in my vehicle unless I was in a pinch.  Even after repacking the bearings it was still pretty noisy, not to mention there wasn't much left of the slip rings after I dressed the groves out of it.

All in all though it did work which is better than some of the other projects some of which fell victim to impatience and large hammers and others just outright didn't work from the get go.

This and the following pics are of a patch on a wet wing style of fuel tank that used to be a part of a Musketeer.  It's probably a good thing that this tank will never have to hold fuel again.  The hole that I'm patching is the one on the right the left hole is where the fuel cap goes 

The hole started out small but because it is inaccessible to the other side I had to make it large enough to get tools in through itself, by tools I mean a bucking bar which is a smooth piece of metal that  is used in conjunction with a rivet gun to drive the aluminum rivets that will be used to hold my doubler in place.  The tape is helping me draw out the placement of all the rivet holes I will drill into the tank skin and the double that is sitting above the tape in the pic.

With the doubler held in place with a couple cleco's I can now prepare a door that will screw on to the  nutplates that I will rivet on to the doubler as well.

 The black swill is in place and the clecos are being replaced with rivets.

 The custom made bucking bar to reach in the hole to buck the back side of the rivets.

All the rivets bucked managed to get most of them in without to many smiley faces.

The rest of the black swill is installed the door is screwed in place should be leak proof in theory.

Isaac's B-Day Pics

Birthday's are wonderful things particularly for kids.  Isaac celebrated his 7th birthday yesterday in aviation style.  Not sure where we got that Idea :-), dad may have been instrumental on that one.  We had along a friend of Isaac's from church and we set off for an adventure at the Airzoo in Kalamazoo.  We had a grand time looking at planes and riding rides and the full motion simulator seemed to be the biggest hit for the kids.  We ended our day with supper and more gaming things at Chuck E Cheese not Dad's Idea but he survived!  All in all we had a great time celebrating Isaac's birthday.  Hope you enjoy some of our pictures from our adventure.  I also added some of these pictures to The Kids Corner page

Franklin found his plane.

Jaclynn's space station design.

Isaac getting ready for space travel.

There was even a good looking women there.

Franklin to the rescue.

Jaclynn's turn to travel in to space

Hang on Isaac we'll save you!

Up up and away.

"Almost ready for my first solo."

First solo

Reporting for duty sir.

"Who did what to the general's car?"

"He did it."

"I miss driving the generals car."

"What about my wings?"

"Roger Five Niner Zulu left turn to heading 095" 

Our Isaac Newton

"Let me show you how it's done Franklin"

"I think this is how it's done"