PCM News: January 2020

27 January 2020

Space Race 2020

Paul and Cathy were able to help a team accomplish a feat at Mercy Air recently that will take some beating.

Something took off from our airstrip and climbed to near space (75,000ft) before descending and landing again.

To give you an idea:
100,000ft is in the Stratosphere and is where the ozone layer is located.
It is three and a half times the height of Everest.
Airliners fly about 35,000ft.
The SR-71 Blackbird spy plane flew at 80,000ft.
The Space station orbits only three and a half times higher at 350,000ft.
In contrast Mercy Air fly locally at around 4500ft and only up to to 12000ft when we go international.

If you've glimpsed the photos yet you will understand that this was no ordinary aircraft but two weather balloons that were launched as part of a project organised by Yellobric (http://www.schoolspacerace.com/news/). This was part of their 'School Space Race' program that aimed to encourage school children from around the globe to use maths, physics and geography to build, launch, and retrieve an unmanned craft as high as possible on a budget.

One of the pupils in an amusing t shirt

It was a pleasant morning when they arrived on the day of the launch and the lack of wind was a bonus.

There was quite a lot of preparation to ensure all connections were.. er..connected...

..and that the tracking equipment was talking to the transponders.

The payload of the transmitter, camera, radar reflector and parachute was 0.55 kg and helium was used to create a lift of 0.65 kg.

The balloons start about 1.5m in diameter but as they ascend and the air gets thinner they expand until, between 6-8m, they burst and return to earth under the parachute about 5 hours later.

The anticipation was immense!

And the crowd went wild!

There was just time for the obligatory selfie...

..before the balloons were lined up for the countdown...

..and release.

Then the tracking team got to work...

..while the cars drove off to recover them.

There was a nifty website that we used to see progress. A screen shot shows the tracks of the balloons with one achieving a maximum altitude of 22432m (73596ft) - their target altitude was 100,000ft.

We were happy to be able to help these schools in their quest by providing a launch site but we won't try to emulate any of their performance figures any time soon - promise!

Thank you.

Paul and Cathy.

21 January 2020

Preparing for the worst - Hoping for the best

After helping extensively with cyclone Idai in Mozambique last year, Mercy Air has reviewed its involvement and put an enhanced disaster management plan in place, to be even better prepared should anything similar happen in the future.

Quite a lot to choose from

One of the issues we faced was the supply of aviation fuel. Things worked out well for us last year, but it could have been very different and we identified that making our own plans could be very pertinent.

Checking each one for condition

To that end, we recently sourced and collected 28 fuel drums from the anti rhino poaching air wing in the Kruger National Park.

We had to drive through the park to get to where the drums were - seriously!

We have since taken them to Maputo for filling and shipped them up to a mission base in central Mozambique.

It was a very hot day!

It is a place we visit often so if, hopefully, there is no emergency to deal with, the fuel certainly won't go to waste.

Thank you.

Paul and Cathy

A short history of us

Not long after we were married we felt that God had some full time work for us overseas. This initially began with a move to Sheffield in 1992 to work for a Christian management training company. Three years later we felt the Lord's prompting that another change was imminent and this led to a move to Africa where we helped set up a youth program with the Lesotho-Durham link in the capital Maseru. An initial three year commitment turned into four after which the youth work was handed over to the nationals.

Then, after feeling God was moving us into mission flying Paul enrolled at a flying school and completed his South African commercial license with an instrument rating in December 1999.

We moved from Lesotho to White River in South Africa in June of 2003 where we now work with Mercy Air. Mercy Air was borne out of Youth with a Mission (YWAM) and is a sister, although smaller organisation to the more well known Mercy Ships. We are situated near Nelspruit and provide a service to missions and the development/aid community in the southern African region but mainly serve Mozambique.

We operate four aircraft at present - a Quest Kodiak, a Cessna 310 and two Airbus 350 helicopters which are often used for the relief flights.

When not flying Paul is responsible for flight operations and is Mercy Air's Safety Officer.

Cathy, who is a registered Nurse and Midwife works part time at Africa School of Missions which is a bible college preparing missionaries for overseas service. She teaches in their School of Health and is part of a team which visits a number of rural clinics during the week. She is also helps with the hospitality ministry that Mercy Air runs.

Matthew spent four years at Rhodes University in Grahamstown where he studied photo journalism. He has now flown the nest and is living with his wife in Durban. They have a young daughter named Isabella.