It just never seems to end. We have a shared spreadsheet somewhere in the cloud. It has everything in it - itinerary, countries, airports, tasks to do (and broken down into various plane, personal, equipment, admin, PR etc categories), money spent, equipment required, maintenance activities and so on. On the tasks tab, we are up to 186 tasks in varies states of progress. At times it seems one step forwards two steps back. We went up in NINJ last week, intending to fly to Southend. Just before the Thames Estuary, Southend Air Traffic Control reported issues with our radio. Sometimes we were clear as a bell and other times just a carrier wave. It didn't matter which Press to Talk button we used or which headset, same problem and one we'd experienced on the way down after having bought the aircraft. Steve @ Lukesfield had removed a unit under the seats that we were transmitting through and we thought that had fixed the problem. But an evening with our Deanland friend Nick Turck @ Kittyhawk resulted in him ruling out any other problems but with the radio and / or control head (the unit that's in the dash). So on to Trig, the makers of the radio, to get this quickly sorted. They're renowned for their customer support but I got them on a bad day or week. Emailed on the Monday, reminder sent on the Thursday and no reply until Sunday evening and no address or returns number until late yesterday evening so not being sent until today.
The Red Cross got in touch - they want us to use a different logo now - same as the one we have but "supporting" above it in very small letters. They've only sent a low res one so I can't go to Jen @ Splatt Design yet to ask her to make another change. And we want to get the T-shirts and stuff done and they've still not got back to us. 1st world problems.
Friday marked us doing Underwater Escape Training at Andark which is basically being in a washing machine underwater to emulate a sea ditching. It started off ok for Luke and I and then got a bit more serious. It was great seeing the every brilliant and confident Luke being a student for once. Wouldn't describe the experience as enjoyable but we did learn one very valuable thing - don't crash in the sea. Had to get into an escape raft with 7 other blokes at one point - quite intimate - and it's where I think I contracted Covid! It did mean a weekend of admin for the trip so something positive from it. As a result lots of stuff arriving through the door from Imodium to condoms that you can wee into if desperate - don't ask. Like the underwater escape training, something you pay for that you hope you'll never need to use!
