Week Three - The Glue

Another week has been completed at MMS!  This week was really kinda funny.

I spent almost the entire week on one single task!  We had Monday off, so on Tuesday we finished up the final touches on the wing we had been working on.  (I got to drive a couple rivets on the actual wing!)

But then we were tasked with removing the de-ice boots on the Cessna 402.

"Boots" are basically a bunch of rubber tubes that run along the leading edge of the wing.  When ice starts to build up on them, the pilot activates the system.  The tubes then inflate and expand, breaking the ice off. Unfortunately, the boots on this airplane were leaking terribly and needed to be replaced.

Miraculously, it only took us about an hour or a little more to get them off, leaving us with a wing that looked like this:

The black still on the wing is rubber left over from the boot, and the brownish stuff is the glue that held it on.  To install the new boots, the wing needs to be totally perfectly clean.  So I went to work:

To get the glue off, I had to apply some very strong paint stripper, let it sit for fifteen minutes or so, then scrape it off with a homemade plexiglass scraper.  It sounds easy enough, but the glue ends up being really sticky again and difficult to work with.  It also looks like...well...here's a picture.

Box-o'-boogers!  Anyway, I spent the rest of Tuesday through Friday getting most of this nasty stuff off. The wings went from this:

to this:

While working on this "grunt work," it was clear to me that I was being helpful.  If God hadn't put me there, one of the mechanics would have had to spend the week doing it, and they were all busy enough working out the landing gear issues created by the previous maintenance shop!

As for the weekend, I broke out the dirtbike and took it somewhere to ride!  After struggling a bit to get it to run, I met a few new friends and rode around in the deepest mud puddles I've ever seen and up and down the steepest hills I've ever seen!  Ohio is more extreme about their dirtbike courses I guess...

[I forgot to take pictures but if I had remembered, this is where I would have put them.]

The real highlight of the weekend though, was that God gave me the opportunity to have spiritual conversations with two of the guys and witness to them!  I'm truly blessed to have such an easy way to turn the conversation toward God because of my internship.

We exchanged phone numbers and plan to go riding again many times before I go back to Indiana.  Please pray for me as I witness to them.  Pray for them, as they need Jesus.

Thank you all for pushing me!

William

PS:  I ordered a bunch of tools that should come in tomorrow!  They should be included in next week's post.

~ Respirators are astoundingly comfortable to wear for 8 hours straight.