This morning we confirm that the starter bendix on the right engine is toast. I helped a local mechanic remove the right engine cowling to inspect the starter and then remove it. He tried in vain to locate a replacement starter bendix at one of the two sources on the island, but no dice. The right engine is counter-rotating, so quickly locating a replacement bendix is unlikely.
The aircraft owner called the previous maintenance shop in California and it turns out they had ordered two starters for the right engine quite a while back by mistake. They still had one sitting on the shelf. The odds of that are too mind-boggling to calculate. They agreed to ship it overnight priority.
Overnight doesn't mean the same thing here as it does elsewhere. For one, the package will have to clear customs which means the starter probably won't arrive until Thursday, possibly as late as Friday morning, maybe not until Monday. I am scheduled to head back on an airline flight in a few days. I'd like to stay longer, but we've been on the road for three weeks now. It's been a wonderful trip and a great adventure, but there are things we have to attend to at home, bills to pay, and I need a haircut!
Since the plane is grounded, we locate an Elite simulator at a local flight school and arrange to rent it. I am very familiar with the Elite software, so I figure this should be a piece of cake. We'll do some holds and a partial panel approach or two. This should make good use of the time, but the simulator turns out to be flaky - the flight controls and the avionics stack periodically seem to loose power and that wreaks havoc with the Elite software. We muddle through a few procedures before calling it quits.
Since the Duchess has a Garmin 530/430 setup, we switch to using the Garmin 530 PC simulator to talk about missed approach procedures, ad hoc holds, and various other Garmin gotchas. After half a day, we've completed about all we can do without the actual aircraft. Hopefully the plane will be back in shape for a flight on Thursday afternoon, maybe two flights on Friday, and perhaps one more on Saturday.
For now, we wait.
