A Wing & A Prayer

Don spent the month of May trying to get ahead of all the flying coming in June and July, MARC’s maximum flying months. Both previous schedulers have expounded the need for a person to be at MAR full time during the busy summer flying season so Don has decided to take himself off the flying schedule starting in May. He was just about there when son Join called about his motorcycle accident that had him in the hospital with a broken elbow, separated shoulder and five broken ribs. Don & Cat boarded and airplane and were in San Francisco for two weeks helping Jon & Jen as he recovered.

April’s flying started with a flight taking Alaska Christian College students and staff to Unalakleet for their annual Youth Rally at the bible camp for Unalakleet youth. The flight out on Friday was blessed with a clear day giving us a gorgeous view of the Alaskan Range with a blanket of new snow. We left the spring weather of Soldotna and arrived in winter Unalakleet. We landed on the newly paved runway in a hefty crosswind. On Saturday a snow storm blew through and Bob & I were grateful we were on the ground.

February’s flying involved Don & Brian taking people from Anchorage, Togiak and Manakotak to the annual Moravian Synod meeting. We picked four people up in Anchorage and then stopped in Togiak to pick up 5 more on our way to Bethel. After refueling we flew down to Manakotak where we picked up 9 people and brought them to Bethel. It was not a long day and the weather was pretty good so we were done by 4 PM.

Don’s Corner:

December’s flying for Don comprised two quick trips. The first was taking nine people from Wassila, just north of Anchorage to Stebbins, just west of Unalakleet. The CASA was also involved bringing an additional 18 people to Stebbins. That’s a total influx of 27 people into a village of 300 - about 10% of the village.

Don’s Corner:
The flying has slowed down a lot during September, October and November. I have only flown once during each month. That doesn’t mean that I’ve been idle. MARC has a new Director, Drew Baker, effective 1 September and with new Director comes change. As well as changes we have been writing things down so they can be evaluated, discussed and improved. I dislike writing. The changes have been positive for the most part and Drew has done a lot of consulting we us all on all the changes he has made so far.

Don’s Corner:
For a place that was supposed to have a more relaxed lifestyle, this place sure makes time fly. I have been trying to get to this newsletter since the end of July and have failed abysmally. I can’t even blame it on a busy flying schedule as I only had one flight in August. I am in the waiting room at the hospital while Cat has her “nissun fundal plication” re-operation (see Catz Corner below). July was a typically busy month although we flew a lot less King Air and Caravan flights because we used the Casa much more.

Don This might be a bit shorter than usual because when I went into my computer to add some pictures to the words I had written a week ago I could not find the file. Having once drug the thoughts out of my mind and put them down on electronic paper I find my memory banks somewhat devoid of data but here goes anyways.
That was short lived. Since I couldn’t remember any of what I wrote and it’s the 26th of June I’ve transitioned to a June newsletter. Besides more has gone on in June than all of March through May.

Another month has flown by. Don’s first mission this month was to take a group from the First Baptist Church of Big Lake, Alaska to Galena. We could not pick them up in Bog Lake because the runway is relatively short so we planned to pick them up in Wasilla about 15 miles away. However on the day of the flight there were low clouds over Wasilla so we changed the pick up airport to Palmer another 15 miles down the road. The lady who was doing all the co-ordination was Jane Thistle, whom Cat & I know through Emmaus.

Well, the flying has slowed down significantly, Mark the primary scheduler is in the lower 48 visiting his supporters from the middle of January until the end of March so I have the whole job until he gets back, Cat’s had back operation on 5 January; all this has meant that I won’t have flown for two months. So I guess the only thing to talk about is the weather. Overall the weather has been pretty good so far.

The first 11 days of this month I spent on the ground in the office playing catch up with the schedule. This was a follow on in the hole we had dug ourselves in June. On the plus side we made many changes that will eventually allow us to get ahead of things – we hope. Being the developer and user really makes changes quick and easy – some problems are identified and a fix implemented in less than a minute. We should really use a database but I can’t bring myself to making that transition – just not enough time to learn Microsoft Access.

The first half of May Don spent in front of his computer working on the scheduling tool he is developing with the other scheduler Mark. We are trying to devise a system where we can enter the data once and have it appear automatically in the several different places it’s needed. We have a set of Excell spreadsheets that we have been using and Don has been modifying them and adding several additional spreadsheets to hold the multitude of information. Then as we use these spreadsheets we find problems or errors which we then have to fix. Sort of USE-FIX-USE approach.