BUSH MECHANICS

Living in the United Kingdom for the last few years has brought home to me the very high level of reliability built into vehicles and light aircraft. Living and working in the harsh environment of the Kalahari Desert demanded a willingness to take on repairs and maintenance tasks that are well beyond the norms in Europe with tarred roads, numerous service stations and experienced mechanics in every town. I recall driving back from Liphepe one day and unusually, I was returning on a section of the "main" road that had been the subject of an informal diversion for many months due to the fact that this section was very heavily corrugated. In the middle of this three-mile section I found an elderly South African couple who had broken down in an Austin Maxi of all cars. This vehicle was totally out of it's element in these conditions, mainly because it used a sophisticated hydrolastic suspension and had very limited ground clearance. The repeated pounding from the corrugations and debris in the central hump on the dirt road had destroyed the hydraulic pipe work, allowing the suspension to drop and giving zero clearance. The couple had been stuck for three days. They had asked a passing truck to ask a garage to come out and help, but of course if the message ever got through, it would have been ignored - nobody called out a mechanic in Botswana in those days! By cutting down some tree branches, they had wedged up the two front wheels with fork shaped branches, and were working on a third wheel when I chanced bye. It was a forlorn task, they had all but run out of water and they were suffering from overexposure to the sun. I took them into the hospital in Molepolole and introduced them to the hospital's vehicle mechanic (and Dr Merriweather!) and I assume that eventually man and machine made it back to South Africa.

On another occasion, I had set off in my Land Cruiser for a trip to a borehole in the western Kalahari somewhere near Ukwi Pan and my only passenger was a minister from the fledgling church starting up at the village. They wanted me to equip the new borehole at the church and install a water supply and this was an initial visit.. Thinking back, I am appalled at how little preparation I made for such trips, over non existent roads with no habitation for many miles, no water and with no possibility of communication. On this trip, I was somewhere about 60 miles west of the Kang-Ghantzi road, north of Hukuntsi cruising along a smooth section of the track when out of the blue the gear lever suddenly dropped out of the bottom of the cab. We coasted gently to a halt in the middle of nowhere and the minister & I looked at each other and I'm sure we both had the same thought - this is serious! On getting out we found that the main chassis cross member which holds up the rear of the gearbox had sheared off neat ly at each end, allowing the whole engine and gearbox assembly to pivot down from the front engine mounts, with the end of the gearbox now dragging in the sand. The splines on the prop shaft had slid beyond the maximum extension and the prop shaft was now buried in the sand. This was serious!} However, mounted on the back of the truck I did have a small petrol driven arc welder which we used for borehole installation work and although I had not come prepared to use it, after scraping around under the passenger seat I did find half a dozen old abandoned welding rods, and in the glove compartment I found a pair of goggles used for acetylene welding. Not really adequate for arc welding but they would have to do. We set to with a will with spades, bare hands and jacks and unburied the prop shaft, got the jack under the gear box and lifted it up bit by bit, propping it up with whatever we could lay our hands on. We eventually got the prop shaft re-engaged as we raised the gearbox and brought the broken cross member into reasonable alignment with the chassis. I then began to try and weld, on my back in the sand, working in an upside down position with old damp rods and the weld spatter falling onto my face. Not the most enjoyable hour I have spent in Botswana. However, three hours after the event we were actually rolling again and still heading West, not running for home. Such was the confidence in my welding! We took the rest of trip out and back rather sedately, but everything held together and I did a bit more precautionary welding at home and I had no more trouble from that department. However, I would recommend that the current owner of a white Land Cruiser, registration number BB159 makes a very careful check of the gearbox cross member NOW!

I also had a couple of tricky situations with aircraft repairs while flying among the bush strips of Botswana. After a two day visit to Maun, on trying the start up the Cessna 206 we got a very dead "thunk" from the starter motor although the battery seemed to be sound. After getting the cowling off and nosing around the starter motor, I felt the only thing I could do was take the motor off and see if anyone in Maun could check it. My tools were limited to a pocket Petersen Vice Grip and a Swiss Army Knife, two tools which I have never been with out for the past 25 years and in no time I was carrying the motor into Riley's Garage behind the hotel and asking for assistance. The mechanic was from the Caprivi Strip, just North of Botswana and it seemed he had grown up as a bush mechanic - he was totally happy to have a go. He spent the first 10 minutes trying to guess what kind of truck it had come off, since he had never seen one like it but I let him get well started before I told him it was off a 'plane, just in case he would be put off.

He was absolutely meticulous in the way he dismantled each part, setting out everything in an orderly fashion and he eventually found the cause of the problem - the insulation on one field coil had worn thin and the exposed coil was earthing on the body. He dug out a fairly clean rag from under the bench and cut it into a long strip and carefully began to wind about half of one section of the coil, neatly overlapping the edges until he was happy he had covered the offending area, before rebuilding the unit with the same care. A quick test with a 12-volt battery confirmed all was well; it took twenty minutes to install it back in the 'plane and when the engine burst into life with the first turn of the switch there was one relieved pilot and one very chuffed mechanic!

On another occasion, I flew the first plane into Tutume airstrip just North of Francistown where I was returning officer there for a general election. At that time I had less than 70 hours total flying time and I committed the cardinal sin of trying to land at the very beginning of a short strip, without ensuring the airspeed was under control. (Getdownitis!). After a couple of rather hard porpoises I had no option but to go around and try again, this time with my mind in gear. On the second attempt I touched down nicely nose up, at the start of the strip with the stall warning horn chirping - ideal. However, when I lowered the nose, it seemed to keep doing down and we came to a stop on the dirt strip very quickly - it seems my first attempt at landing had burst the front tyre.

Of course, there are very few things that a private pilot can legally tackle in the area of aircraft maintenance, but what to do in the middle of nowhere? What to do is get a few people to sit on the tail t o lift the nose so you can take the wheel off and try and fix it! Light aircraft wheel rims split into two halves; this makes it less likely for the tyre to roll off in the event of a puncture and we soon had the tyre off and had the tube in hand. It had no less than seven rips in the surface and would normally have been beyond repair. Normally!. A Norwegian volunteer with a Honda motor bike had a puncture repair kit at the village so we spent the next hour cutting up old inner tubes and making a range of patches, large and small and eventually got the tube to hold air. We refitted the tyre and blew it up to pressure with a bicycle pump and it seemed to be leak free, so the tyre lay by my camp bed for a couple of nights to make sure it didn't deflate and on the day of departure we refitted it and crossed our fingers for take off. All was well and a gentle landing on the tarred runway at Gaborone caused no alarm. I taxied to the maintenance hanger and told the engineer about the problem and suggested that a new tube at least was in order, if not the tyre. Two weeks later I went to hire the same plane and I casually enquired about the replacement tyre & tube. The answer was "what tyre & tube?' I took another plane!