 |
| By Carmelo Turdo |
Manos de Compasion (Hands of Compassion) recently took delivery of their newest
aircraft, a twin-engine Piper Geronimo, for use in support of the children’s
home ministry located near the Bay of Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala. The use of
this aircraft is vital to meeting the daily needs of the over fifty children receiving
foster care in a region lacking adequate ground transportation and
infrastructure. In Part One and Part Two of this series, we reported on the use
of aviation at Manos de Compasion and how St. Louis-based Big River Aviation
became involved with the restoration to flight of the ministry’s latest
aircraft. In Part Three, we take a detailed look at the aircraft restoration
project as it was conducted before the delivery flight in February 2020 as told
by those who were directly involved.
We pick
up the story at the time when the current and former Directors of Manos de
Compasion, Dave Reichard and Tom Stukenberg, were flying their early model
Cessna 172 in the high altitude environment of southwestern Guatemala. Most of
the flights are made between the ministry’s airstrip and Guatemala City for
court hearings and grocery shopping.
“Our
grass airstrip by the home is at fifty-three hundred feet,” Tom Stukenberg told
The Aero Experience. “Guatemala City is five thousand feet. And in between
there you have to be seven thousand, eight thousand feet and to be up above the
clouds at ten, twelve thousand feet. The old Cessna would just putt, putt, putt
up there but you had to be so careful with weight and you really couldn’t haul
any supplies or anything. So we were thinking and praying about getting a
different one and then this one [the twin-engine Piper Geronimo] showed up in
Trade-A-Plane and I thought, ‘That’s the plane we need.’ But it turned out to
be more of a project than we really figured.”
“We
ended up here in St. Louis through a chain of references, actually starting in
Guatemala with some other bush pilots down there,” Dave Reichard continued the
story. “The big issue was that the plane we had purchased was in the middle of
nowhere, and we didn’t know any mechanics down there. Luckily, Paul Voorhees at
Big River Aviation decided that he would take on the challenge and head down
there.”
The
connection was made through a mutual friend, Bob Willhoit of Central Air Parts
in Staunton, IL, who had supplied aircraft parts to both Big River Aviation and
Manos de Compasion over the years. Paul Voorhees, owner of Big River Aviation
in St. Louis, adds his view of the initial contact.
"Bob
Willhoit said, ‘Paul, I know you’ve done things for Wings of Hope. I’ve got
this missionary group down in Guatemala that needs some help. They need someone
to go down to Louisiana and do a pre-buy on a Piper Geronimo.’ I had been
working on a Piper Aztec out at Wings, and they are a similar airplane. He
said, ‘If it’s okay, I’ll give them your number.’ He did, and I got a phone
call. He said he didn’t have time to do it, that he’d worked with them for
years helping them get parts to support the aircraft they had.”
 |
| Tom Stukenberg |
 |
| Paul Voorhees |
“I get
a phone call from Tom, who is down in Guatemala, and he explains the situation,”
Voorhees continued. “He tells me about doing a pre-buy down there. I told him, ‘Yeah
I can go down there.’ I told him I could go down there and do everything on a
budget. I talked to Steve Long, former Hangar Director for Wings of Hope, and
asked if he wanted to go to Louisiana with me and evaluate this airplane. And
so Steve and I go down there and we make a list of everything we needed to do…We
talked to the guys down in Guatemala and they made a deal, they got the
airplane…They had seen it but they didn’t realize how big of a project it
really was.”
“Several
years ago, I met Dave when he and Tom were looking for a small twin-engine
aircraft to replace their aging Cessna 172,” Steve Long, now with One Spirit Engineering,
told The Aero Experience. “They
needed an airplane that performed better at high altitude and could easily
takeoff and land on a grass runway surrounded by mountains. Dave explained the necessity of having an aircraft to fly himself and the children
to regularly pick up supplies and meet with government officials in the family
court system in Guatemala City.
 |
| Steve Long |
“Tom purchased a Piper Geronimo (Apache conversion) from Jake Hearnsberger in
Northern Louisiana,” Long continued the story. “The previous year, Jake started
restoring the airplane, which included disassembling the aircraft to make
repairs. Being newly married, Jake and his wife had their first baby, so Jake
decided his family took priority over the Geronimo. Tom was introduced to Paul
Voorhees, owner of Big River Aviation, via Bob Willhoit of Central Air Parts in
Staunton, IL. Tom asked Paul to make a trip to Louisiana and see how long it
would take to get the aircraft back to Illinois where Paul’s aircraft
maintenance business is located. Since I had years of experience maintaining
and modifying mission aircraft, Paul asked me to go along with him to help with
the assessment. So off to Louisiana we went...Jake was gracious to allow us to
use his hangar while we re-assembled the aircraft.”
Paul
Voorhees describes the situation after arriving to inspect the aircraft in the
summer of 2018. “The airplane was gutted from nose to tail - everything in the
nose compartment, all the air ducting going to the heater. The nose gear was
not even connected. The steering was all disconnected. All the electrical had
been removed out of the nose and were all just piled up around this hangar...It took six trips.”
“Paul
and I were shocked to see the aircraft in hundreds of pieces,” Steve Long
added. “Paul and Kevin Hammond, an Airframe and Powerplant instructor at St
Louis Community College, made several more trips…The project took about a year
to make the airplane airworthy enough to fly to Paul’s shop at St. Louis
Downtown Airport, about a 4-hour flight. Nick Turk, a retired U.S. Air Force
Colonel and now with Aero Careers who wanted to be part of the team as our “ferry”
pilot, made the last two trips to Louisiana and flew the aircraft back to St.
Louis.”
Now the
rest of the work was underway at Big River Aviation in April of 2019. There
were some bright spots at the outset, with work already completed on the engines
and propellers. There was new anticorrosion treatment in the floorboards and soundproofing.
The upholstery had already been done. The paint job was already on the plane (the
original owner in TX owned a paint shop). All the flight controls had been
balanced. The interior and carpet are Airtex certified interior. There were
complete logs all the way back to nineteen sixty. Even so, work continued all
through 2019 until late January of this year.
 |
| Dave Reichard and Steve Long |
Paul
Voorhees continues with the list of maintenance items completed on the
aircraft. “Every air duct in that airplane that goes from the heater from the
front where the air vent comes in has been replaced with new, so all the way
from the nose of the airplane to the end of the baggage compartment – all new
ducting – under the floor, everything. Floor board supports needed
reinstallation. All new wiring behind the panel - Steve Long did that work. We
installed a brand-new Stratus transponder and engine analyzer. The radio that
was in there is an older unit but it had been sent out for overhaul [MAC-1700].
It has brand-new antennas, brand-new coax going to the antennas. All the old
breakers have been removed and then relocated to where the pilot can see them
and activate them [they were underneath the instrument panel]. New push-pull
breakers and all-new wiring.”
“I
spent almost another year installing new avionics and instruments, repairing
most of the electrical system, and replacing all the flexible hoses and other
things a 60-year old aircraft needs after many years of service,” Steve Long recalled.
“Paul and his crew made some engine and fuel tank system repairs to prepare it
for service in Guatemala. Mike Dealy,
who leads the aircraft maintenance training program at Southwest Illinois College, offered his equipment to assist us in the repair and weighing of the
aircraft…This was truly a team project with everyone volunteering their time
and talent.”
 |
| Dave Reichard and Paul Voorhees |
“We had
to replace the exhaust, which was a big cost,” Dave Reichard added. “We had
some radio issues, installation of some new parts. Another guy here [Steve
Long], who I had met a few years ago when I was doing my training at Wings of
Hope, just happened to be working here with Big River Aviation. I got to meet
him again, and he and Big River Aviation really helped a lot with cost,
volunteering a lot of time to help us get this plane done. It was incredible to
see how so many different people just came together. Wings of Hope helped us,
other mechanics and even the guys on the field would say, ‘I’ve got a part for
that,’ and they would go run and grab it and bring it back. It’s been really neat
to see how the people around here have come together to help us.”
 |
(L-R) Dave Reichard, Steve Long and Nick Turk
(Nick Turk photo)
|
Nick
Turk, a professional pilot and owner of Turk Aviation, volunteered his services
as pilot-in-command for the flights following the restoration of the aircraft to
flight status. “The test flight of the plane on November 20 was the first time
it has flown in eight months since the plane was flown to St. Louis from
Louisiana,” he told The Aero Experience.
Nick Turk, Steve Long and Dave Reichard were flying that day when a problem
developed with the fuel system, causing a temporary engine failure. The engine
was restarted and they returned to Big River Aviation at St. Louis Downtown
Airport for repair.
The
aircraft was ready for further flight testing soon thereafter, and more tweaks
were needed to make the fuel tanks feed correctly and clear up radio signal
issues cured by installing upgraded coax cable. Additional test flights and an
extended period of poor weather conditions delayed the delivery flight until
February 2, 2020. We will include more of the preparations for the departure flight
in Part Four of this series.
The Aero Experience was on site to document much of the work accomplished restoring and test flying the Geronimo at Big River Aviation. Along with this four-part narrative, told by those directly involved in the project, we have archived several thousand photos and video clips that will be included here and in future stories. Below we include a series of photos that capture the essence of our visits from April to December, 2019.
April - October, 2019
November 2019
December, 2019
We hope
that you will support the great work of Manos de Compasion by contributing
directly to their ministry. Please consider visiting their website and making a
generous donation to support their work as a foster family to these beautiful
and wonderful children!
No comments:
Post a Comment