Some down some up
 

A good friend of mine had a not so good day yesterday. He did a good job, in a difficult situation. The ground is terribly dry and firm here right now, and the grass there is not really maintained as a landing area, so it could not have been a very smooth landing no matter how well he executed it.



I had this type of failure 25 years ago in a 185 amphib, though I had the ice of a frozen lake to land on, so it was a non event for me. Ironically, I was flying the same plane in which I had been a passenger 15 years before that, when the same thing happened.

Fine job getting it down. What was the cause of the loss of power?

Looks like the port wheels were not down.

The Cessna 206 amphibian had to be landed with the right side wheels extended and the left side retracted due to a hydraulic line failure. The landing surface choice becomes very limited. Ice is the very best, followed by grass (wet if possible). Hard surface runway will wear away a lot of keel. If you land on the water that way, you're going to tumble the aircraft over, and wreck it.

All that said, amphibians still offer the greatest versatility in landing, and for landing gear failures, as long as they are flown with skill and discipline. What other aircraft type could be landed one up and one down main, and perhaps have no damage!

"The easiest way to kill yourself in a floatplane is to land an amphibian on water with the wheels down," I was told, the instructor claiming that most other landing accidents had a rather better chance of being survivable.

The fire dept hosed down the grass prior to the landing.