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This Change Subject To Plan

We have a lot of thunder and lightning in the area, and the power just went off ten minutes ago. It's back on again. The electric company service has continued to improve over the past several years, and the power is rarely out for long when it goes out during a lightning storm. Chad and Dale are getting ready to head out for one more flight each this afternoon. The storm is just in the Shell area, so they shouldn't have much trouble getting the flights done as planned.

Speaking of plans, things didn't go as planned last week when Bruce and Dale went out to the south repeater to do some work. They flew to Visui where they were planning to land, and found a trench across the runway. The people from the village there were running some electric cable from one side to the other. So they had to land at Makuma instead, and start walking from there, adding a couple hours to their hike. While they were up at the repeater, the people in Visui finished laying the cable, and filled in the trench. Thankfully the guys were able to take off out of Visui, and avoid walking all the way back to Makuma. If they had to go back to Makuma, it would have meant spending the night there, and flying home the next day. As it was, they didn't start down from the repeater until about 4:15 PM, and just barely made it down to meet Dan in enough time to fly back to Shell.