In my day job I write risk assessments and method statements every day.
I deal with consultants and engineers and experts every day. These guys write hypothetical risk assesments that make my job impossible. They charge more for a hyperthetical assesment that I charge to actually do the job.
More often than not I find that these consultants specify things that cannot be achieved, and when questioned on detail have to admit that they don' t know anything about what we do. Meanwhile we have 45yrs experience in the field of installing our products with a combined experience of over 60 yrs in our management team of 3 people. We have over 3800 successful installations .
That gives us credability.
Gives you credibility? With respect to flying low level operations over water? No, not really.
Now, if those were 45 years of experience flying low level operations, with 3,800 low level hours, and a combined total of 60 years of low altitude experience by those same three people, you'd have something. As it turns out, you don't. If you'd spend all day flying low altitude runs, rather than spend all day writing "risk analysis," you'd have something. But you don't. If the consultants and engineers you deal with all day have that experience and care to chime in, they'd have credibility on the topic.
Your sum total contribution to the topic seems to be that you've done it and didn't die, and you think it's fun.
Also there are geographical detail differences between doing this on the east coast of England and in an air sea search situation in a flying boat over the sea.
Flying over the sea near the east cost of England is different than flying over the sea in the middle of the Atlantic, or over the sea on the west coast of the United States? Is the atmosphere composed of different gasses? Are the waves formed differently? How exactly does being close to England make it any different.
I hear this a lot on this site. Carburetor ice is different within the borders of the UK, vs. anywhere else on earth. Pilots in the UK don't need aircraft flight manuals, although everywhere else requires them. Pilots in the UK don't need to learn to lean the mixture, even though it's one of the most basic tenets of operating a piston aircraft engine. And so on. Now I'm most impressed to learn that flying over water near the UK is entirely different than flying over water anywhere else, and I'm frothing at the mouth to learn why.
I'd really love to hear your take on glassy water, too.