The Cools Family with MAF
in Australia

It has been a very busy few months since the Christmas break. Hans has been busy putting some of the students through their final block of training before they leave to go and look for a job. Below are a few highlights of the last few months.

Since just before Christmas, Hans has been busy training 6 students towards their last part of their training, the multi-engine instrument rating. This rating allows pilots to fly in bad weather conditions and through clouds. The course itself really is the pinnacle of most basic training a pilot will do. Most pilots will go on to do some extra training to fly bigger planes, but the basis of their flying career is build doing the 1.5 years (roughly) intense training.

To say that this course has been easy would be a lie. We’ve had a few issues with Covid at the beginning of the year, the aircraft we were using broke down and had to go into long term aeroplane hospital (needed double engine overhaul, which wasn’t expected as they were relatively new). A couple of the guys failed an exam the first time around, which delayed the course further, etc. We were really blessed that there was a quick solution to not having an aircraft problem, it really was a God-given miracle. Although the new aircraft didn’t come without its challenges, we were able to train 4 of the 6 to the end of the course, 3/4 had successful flight tests, and we are waiting for a one more to sit his flight test hopefully next week. The other 2 students will restart training very shortly.

It has been a real privilege to be able to train these guys; these are the same guys Hans flew around the Northern Australia safari with. Their hard work has paid off, and it is good to see one of them already being employed at a local operator.

One of the other students has gone to Arnhem Land to do a 1-year work placement, and hopefully he will be able to stay on as a pilot by the end of that. I am sure that all of them will find respectable jobs in the future. But finding that first job is really the hard part.

The girls have been in school all year. The school year started a couple of weeks later due to Covid, but there have been minimal disruptions since the beginning of the year. Ameiah started Grade 1 and Olivia started in Grade 3. Both are enjoying school, although at the beginning they really didn’t want to go back to school as they had had such a great 3 months of holidays playing with each other.

Things are slowly opening up. The Australian borders have just opened up to everyone without quarantine requirements, which means that tourism will recommence, which is a very big part of the industry in the area we live.

Melissa has been busy with Uni and taking care of the house. She’s almost finished with one more of her subjects and getting closer to finishing her degree. This unit is all about Chinese culture, which is very interesting, but also quite difficult. After this unit she will have to do another 7 units to finish her Bachelor.

Because we have been so busy in the last few months, we took the long weekend to go away and refresh. We went up to Cape Tribulation and visited the Mossman Gorge. We had a great weekend, but unfortunately Melissa and Olivia caught Covid after the trip. So we are now all in isolation at home feeling a bit worse for wear.

Overtaking one of the other aircraft during the hour building exercise (safari) we did last week. In the background you can see the Simpson Desert.