Fall Activities and Surprise Guests!

Fall Activities
It's cold, damp, cloudy and windy so it must be County Fair time! Coshocton has the last county fair in Ohio...out of 88 counties...we're last in the schedule. Consequently it's usually jackets, wool caps, and cocoa which isn't necessarily what one thinks of for a fair, but that's the way it is.

Depending on which way the wind blows, we live close enough to the fair grounds to listen to the tractor pulls, hear the screams from the rides, listen to the calling of the horse races, and sit on our deck to watch the fireworks. Oh yeah, and we can smell all the great fair food cooking...

So with those sounds and smells in the background Karen and I started our own fall activities by moving wood from our backyard woodpile and garage woodpile onto our new front porch wood rack. The wood rack was an early Christmas present (thanks, Mom!) which we're putting to use. There's a right way and a wrong way to stack wood and after 7 years of practice Karen's finally catching on.

Karen and our first wood stack of the season. Nice wood rack, isn't it?

I also mowed the yard, pulled the water hoses and stored them for winter, purchased kerosene for our little space heater, and straightened up a few things in the garage while Karen baked gingersnap cookies and a coffee cake with cherry pie filling. Try a big slab of that with a mug of Caroline's Coffee before church...oh yeah...

Surprise Guests
We received a phone call a couple hours ago from friends of ours from Calvary Bible Church in Grass Valley, California, which is my home church. Bill & Adele called from outside of Dayton and wondered if they could stop by. Of course! They're on the road in their camper and heading east. How fun is that?

They should arrive sometime around 7 PM this evening, will spend the night, and attend church with us tomorrow. Sometime in there we'll tour MMS. It'll be fun to show them the mission and to have them in church tomorrow as I'm drumming, Karen's singing, and then we're both singing as part of a "special" we're doing during offering. I'm sure we'll have pictures to post later.

Have a great weekend and stay tuned...

Leftover Jalapenos? Hot Pepper Jam!

Even though salsa season has ended, our pepper plants continued to produce! What to do with a pile of jalapenos? Why, you make hot pepper jam, of course! Well, at least that's what we did last evening.

Karen has this great recipe that tastes wonderful spilled over a block of cream cheese and eaten as a dip with crackers.

And it's totally festive as we head into the holiday season because the green and red jalapenos are mixed with green and red bell peppers in a pinkish jam. Oh man, my mouth's already watering waiting for those holidays to arrive. By the way, did I mention we pickeled some hot-pepper eggs that need to "age" for a year? Come on...summer of 2010! But back to the hot pepper jam...

The raw materials.

Head pepper chopper.

Chopped jalapeno peppers nearly fill our two quart bowl.

Karen measures out the pepper mix (notice the two bowls of sugar!)

Karen loads the jelly jars with the hot jam.

If you come out for a visit this fall, we'll have the salsa and the pepper jam waiting for you! But you'll need to wait for next summer for the hot-pepper eggs...

King Air Phase Inspection: Day 7

The guys continue to move closer to completion of Phase Inspection 3 & 4 on the King Air. Josh is reinstalling the interior, Andy is finishing the inspection of the tail structure, and Ian and Mike are inspecting the inside of the engines with a borescope. It's important to look inside a turbine engine and to inspect the rotors and vanes for the smallest defects due to the high-speeds and tremendous pressures generated within the engine.

Ian, on the ladder, positions the scope so the internal components of the right engine can be seen on the borescope's video screen. Mike, on the right, controls the scope imagery, and Dale assists in analyzing the visual details.

Ian removes the right side exhaust port of the left engine so it can be "scoped" as well.

Dale continues work on the annual inspection of a local Piper Comanche.

Maintenance Continues on the King Air

The inspection process of Gospel Carrier International's King Air 200 continues to go deeper into the airframe and the engines. Simultaneously conducting phase inspections 3 & 4 is a great maintenance strategy minimizing aircraft down-time, while utilizing maximum manpower.

Ian & Paul inspect engine filters, Dennis & Tim address an airframe issue on the wing, and Mike checks engine components. Chuck, Andy, Josh, and Jim are also assigned to the project.

The Pratt Whitney PT-6 engine.

Ian closely scrutinizes one of the filters for the engine.

Paul matches new O-rings with various engine filters.