Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Moving the Navajo


There is never a dull moment in Nondalton...
When a Navajo landed that needed more work than they could do on it in Nondalton, a maintenance crew came in and took it apart to transport it to a hangar in Port Alsworth 20 miles away.
The kids were eager to help. Below we are loading a wing onto a trailer.The kids hopped on to make sure it didn't slide off for its trip to the lake.Andy and Micah came down with a Lund boat to haul the wings to Port Alsworth. They inflated catamaran pontoons for each side to handle the large load.
The wings fit on just perfectly.
By the time they were lashed down they looked like they belonged there as some sort of experimental speed boat. It was actually the opposite. I think it took them well over 4 hours to make it to Port Alsworth. The unwieldy makeshift barge guzzled up the extra gas they brought along and they had to have another boat bring them a refill before they made it home. The boat that brought them the gas tried to tow them for a little more speed, but that just caused the back end to start swamping. So, they took their time and made it home safely.While they were barging home we loaded the wingless fuselage into a plane that looked like a baby C-130.
As the Navajo was swallowed up, it couldn't have fit any more perfect. They were even able to close the bottom half of the door.
The fog was hanging on the hills as the plane inside a plane took off.

1 comment:

Karen said...

I got some pics of the fuselage when they were pulling it out at the other end! I was amazed that it fit so perfectly in the casa! Never a dull moment for sure!