Main Dog & Indie,
Your have hit the nail on the head, in any open water operations you must always parallel the swell. Or you will simply bash the aircraft to death very quickly.
Floating hull types (Mallard/CL415 et al) are a little bit better suited to open water ops but still must parallel the swell same principals apply.
To answer Hunterboy… well I am not complaining just trying to highlight the grass is definitely not greener. Hands down the stick and rudder flying is unsurpassed, luckily my career has covered gliders, single and multi helicopters, single and multi pistons and turbines, medium bizjets to Boeings, and on every continent except Antarctica and South America. But from a flying perspective for me nothing beats the hands on nature of float ops.
Everything is different in its own way and I have yet to experience anywhere near the constant risk assessment and re-evaluation of flight/ground safety that I did in 3 years on, open water floats.
I have never had to swim out to a Boeing at 0530 morning to start it and move it to the terminal! But that is par for the course if you are sitting in the left seat of a TwinOtter Floatie when the boat driver does not show.
Commercial Float & Rotary ops share many common attributes when it comes to off strip and confined area ops, with many shared principals. However it stops once on the water where you now become a boat.
So if you have entertained the idea of swapping seniority, a roster and stable income. For hard work, random challenging events, and pure exhilaration of conquering the elements with a unique combination of man and machine, there is no better place to cut your teeth than on floats.
The challenge is simply unique.
Airline pilots, PPL’s and Space Shuttle Skippers cant all be wrong
Can they?
