AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 66

PATRULLA AÉREA CIVIL
COLOMBIANA AWARDED
GOOGLE GRANT

The Colombian NGO took first place in
the local 2017 Google.org challenge, winning a $350,000 grant, and competed in
the regional contest (Latin America) and
was awarded an additional $100,000.
The Google Global Impact Awards support nonprofits using technology and
innovation to address human challenges
across the world. The organization looks
for "entrepreneurial teams with an idea
to change the world and a healthy disregard for the impossible," according to its
website. Juan Carlos Lenz, president of
PAC, said the grant money will help them
develop a health information system and
renew and improve the NGO's medical
equipment.

numerous rivers flowing below us to the
Pacific Ocean. Lenz sits back and refastens
his seat belt. The stall warning sounds and
we touch down on a narrow strip, landing
short and tight on an airport only yesterday cleared for this mission with machete
and scythe. About 10 camouflaged, heavily armed soldiers greet us. Welcome to
El Charco, Colombia, South America. It's
100 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity
is stifling.
"Colombia is a big country; we have
three big mountain ranges, deserts, jungles," Lenz says. "We serve faraway
communities in isolated places, transforming lives in Colombia."
NO GRAY AREA

FLIGHT PLANNING is no simple affair,

with weather concerns, the always-rising
terrain, and bureaucracy. Veteran PAC pilot
Hans Timcke (above left and far right) has
been flying these missions for dozens of
years but on this day he will get caught in
a bureaucratic snafu and it will take PAC
President Juan Carlos Lenz (above center)
most of the day to get Timcke's Piper Seneca II cleared to assist with the mission,
landing in El Charco in the mid-afternoon
(right).
66 | AOPA PILOT May 2018

Their service is the work of the Patrulla
Aérea Civil Colombiana (PAC), the Civil
Air Patrol of Colombia, based outside of
Bogotá. Not like the U.S. Civil Air Patrol,
but a group of pilots who, for the past 50
years, have used their $100 hamburger
money to fly doctors and aid into the
remote villages of Colombia. Bentata is
an exiled Venezuelan who is heartbroken
that he cannot help in his native country,
so he volunteers his time and his aircraft
in Colombia. Lenz is the president of PAC;
his father was one of the original members.
"I love it. It's my passion. It's the best
combination-flying and love for my country. I love my country. I love its people,"
says Lenz.
The PAC is a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that was established in the
late 1970s to provide care in remote areas of
Colombia that its organizers-local private

pilots-could fly to. As an NGO, it organizes
and staffs missions into areas where medical care is limited. Doctors, nurses, and aid
workers are transported into these remote
areas by an assortment of aircraft, from
Kodiak to Cessna 172s, and everything in
between. The pilots are all volunteers, as
are the medical staff. A small staff manages
the PAC at the Guaymaral Airport, a GA
airport outside of Bogotá.
The challenges in this remote, poor
village include the obvious-no air conditioning, no cars, very little clean running
water. Most of the Pacific coast of Colombia
is inhabited by Afro-Colombians, descendants of freed and escaped slaves who fled
here in the late eighteenth century. Only
the United States and Brazil have larger
black populations outside Africa; about 10
percent of Colombia is of African descent.
Separate and across the river from the
main center of El Charco is an indigenous
tribe of native Colombians.
The concrete-block building where we
are headed is a former school and clinic
that is vacant most of the time (there is a
local doctor who practices for a fee here).
The airstrip we landed on cannot accommodate the other aircraft flying from
Bogotá; the doctors and nurses land farther down the Tapaje River at Guapi and
take a longer boat trip to El Charco. As we
walk through the streets, a man on a small
motorbike is announcing the arrival of
the doctors on a bullhorn. The clinic sets
up here about once a year. Villagers have
been notified and appointments taken,
but the announcement is to both remind
and nudge people to take advantage of this


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AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018

Contents
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - Intro
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - BB1
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - BB2
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - Cover1
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - Cover2
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - Contents
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 2
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 3
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 4
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 5
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 6
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 7
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 8
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 9
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 14
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 15
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 16
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 17
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 18
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 19
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 19a
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 19b
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 20
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 21
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 23
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 24
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 25
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 26
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 27
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 50
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 51
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 52
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - R-1
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - R-2
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - R-3
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - R-4
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - R-5
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - R-6
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - R-7
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - R-8
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 53
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 54
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 56
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 64
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 65
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 66
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 67
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 69
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 79
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 80
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - 81
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - Cover3
AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2018 - Cover4
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