Adjusting the Cone Markers on Telefomin Airstrip

Bring a part of the Telefomin community is a real privilege.  Although the new road has reached us now, they’re still working on making it safe and drivable for all. Once that’s done, it will be about an 3 hour drive to the nearest town, but the road only serves Telefomin, not the other 25 remote airstrips within 20nm.  That means the airstrip is still a life line to the surrounding communities, as it has been since the early 1960s.  Many local friends, especially the older ladies, often tell me how they pray “Jesus bless you”, whenever they see the MAF plane take off or land.  Many of them, and their churches, only have roofing iron on their houses, instead of grass & sticks, because MAF has flown it in for them in the past.

Being a part of any community comes with responsibilities, we take ours seriously.  Obviously our main responsibility is to keep the plane flying, so Ryan makes sure he tries to get a good nights’ sleep so he’s safe to fly each day.  But having lived in this community for over 7 years, we try to contribute more than just what our jobs expect.  The local Government pays people to cut the grass on the airstrip; we’re really grateful for this as it helps to keep the airstrip dry and safe, so Ryan can see if there’s debris, dogs or pigs on the runway.  The people move the cone markers to cut the grass, but then they don’t usually put them back in the right place, so we like to take a walk down the airstrip and straighten up the cone markers so it’s clear for other pilots where the airstrip center line is where they should land.  This time, Ryan thought we’d do it REALLY thoroughly and use a Range Finder and GPS.  So that was our morning’s activity, all 3 of us, walking up the airstrip on a bright, sunny day, just our extra little contribution towards our local community.