S.S.D. :
The Cat is not difficult to fly as long as you understand its habits.
Yes it is very heavy on the controls and constant re trimming when required makes it easier, but that holds true for any airplane.
As to hard to land.......... On land it is very straight foward and not having flaps does not pose any problem whatsoever. The secret to a good landing on the runway or grass is to land in a high nose up attitude, and hold a high alpha attitude until elevetor effectiveness decays and the nose goes down. That will ensure that you do not develope nose wheel shimmy which all Cats are prone to. Also the high alpha gives excellent aerodynamic braking.
On the water the Cat is very demanding, unless the touch down attitude is correct it will porpoise and unless corrected will quickly become uncontrollable.
The touch down attitude must be slightly nose high, you have five degrees of attitude change to work with.
To high a nose attitude will result in the far aft portion of the hull to contact the water first and it will slam nose down resulting in a bow wave popping the nose back up like a cork popping out of a bottle. Each occilaton becomes more violent and the third one will result in the aircraft destruction.
To low a nose down attitude is the most dangerous due to the fact that if the touch down speed is high enough ( 80 Knots or more ) the nose wheel doors can peel their skins and the airplane will break up, usually killing the crew.
Having said the above, properly flown the Cat is a wonderful machine.
I waterbombed for fifteen years and we did thousands of water landings without wrecking any Cats. As well as the waterbombing I have several thousand hours of other types of flying including airline flying with them.
Like all aircraft, fly them the way they are designed to be flown and no problem.
Cat Driver: