Float plane adventures

[mary meagher]

As promised. It is tremendous fun to go back to Sir Francis Chichester's way of flying, you have an infinity of places to safely descend; open ocean however is not recommended. And Sir Francis himself got in trouble because he failed to remember to bail out his floats, so they got heavier and heavier.....

More stories to follow, perhaps other float plane pilots could contribute? I've got to take my car back to the dealer this morning, and anyhow it is too foggy to fly near Banbury....

[Shaggy Sheep Driver]

I did once consider getting a water rating, but then I thought "where would I fly?". It's great in Scotland where every loch is available to the float plane pilot, but in England and Wales you can't land on water without the lake owner's permission.

I live in the middle of England! Plenty of lakes, meres, and reservoirs round here, but none you can fly from.

[S-Works]

I am off to Como in a couple of weeks probably fly the LA4 this time around as I need to do my 12 take off and landings on water to revalidate by March. I will take a few pictures!

[Jan Olieslagers]

Who has any experience with seaplane training on the river Mosel, near Trier?

Wasserflugberechtigung (http://www.drive-and-fly.de/index.php/flugschule/wasserflugberechtigung)

[9 lives]

Water flying offers an awesome new sense of freedom and adventure, and a huge amount of new hazards and gotchas for the poorly trained and practiced.

Happily, within ten minutes flying of my runway at home, I have a dozen lakes to land into. There are a couple of lakes, or areas which are "avoid" for water planes, but that's hardly a problem. I've left a few photos on the photos thread, I'll find a few more to post.

There is a huge sense of improved safety flying even a straight floatplane, if it quits you have so many more choices of where to land. Amphibians even more so.

Along with the freedom comes all kinds of new risks though. I can spend a dozen hours giving a new pilot float training, but then I think about the next 50 hours or so which really should be mentored. It's one thing to have the basic skills to operate the aircraft, but entirely another to know where to operate it! The fact that you can land on a particular body of water, does not mean that you should! The first thing to think about is that with a few ever so slight exceptions, ever place you would think to land on the water is not a place designed to have aircraft operations, so there is zero aircraft infrastructure there - no windsock, docks or other shore features which may not welcome aircraft, and if something breaks in the plane, repairs are a long, expensive ride away.

That's why, to a large degree, water flying is a team sport - we all help one and other, and watch the other's backs.

My summer trip to the Torngat Mountains at the north tip of Labrador, Canada was a huge team effort - 15 people in 7 planes (I was the only solo). Varying experience, but the least piloting time of the pilots was still hundreds of water hours. Still, lots of communication between planes to assure safety. I carried enough tools and materials to do possible repairs, right up to riveting a patch over a hole in a float/hull. We did get as far as 300 miles away from the nearest town with any help whatever - even going back for something you need is very costly. You've got to be ready to take care of yourself, and the team. No stupid mistakes that'll turn a landing into a crash site, or that one rock near shore into your Costa Concordia! - the big help is a long way away!

The reward is am immense sense of freedom. With planning, and my following advice and a route, I spent a day and night on my own. I camped about 90 miles from the nearest other person - what a feeling!

http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b617/jim246/IMG_1146_zps71a90141.jpg

[Gertrude the Wombat]

There was my partial engine failure in a 206 on floats whilst trying to ridge soar Mount Doom, but I'm sure I must have already told that story here.

[India Four Two]

GTW,

I don't think we've heard about your Mt. Doom escapade - do tell.

Float planes - all the fun of flying combined with "messing about in boats".

I did my float plane rating in a Bellanca Scout at Vancouver International many years ago. Landing on the Fraser River just to the south of the airport.

All of the circuits were done on the Fraser adjacent to Pitt Meadows and then on Harrison and Alouette Lakes and a mountain lake checkout at Widgeon Lake (49°26'47"N 122°39'49"W).

http://randallshirley.smugmug.com/Travel/Flying-Photos/Vancouver-Mountains-Airplane/966052617_JWtiD-S.jpg

http://trudelsknapsack.com/Photos/Adventure%20Pages/Widgeon%202004/94_widgeon-lake.jpg

Even though it was only at 2800', in May the lake was still frozen, so I couldn't land. However, the go-around involved a low-speed, half-flap 180 inside the lake margins in order to climb out the way we approached. Probably more training value than actually landing.

I've been practising that approach recently in X-Plane and it is just as exciting as I remember.

Two highlights of my course were an "I learned about flying from that" moment" and a demonstration of the utility of floatplanes.

1. I landed on the wake of a barge near Pitt Meadows. The waves were only about one foot high, but it felt like the floats were going to be flattened. "Never do that again!"

2. Flying back to YVR from some solo circuits at Harrison Lake, I was desperate for a pee. So I landed on the Pitt River, shut-down, stepped out on the float and then a minute later, feeling much more comfortable ;), I started up and took off.

Years later, a friend of mine, with a newly-minted float rating, took me for a ride in a Super Cub at Lake Windemere (BC, not Cumbria). I got the bug again and went to talk to the FBO. After a one-hour checkout, I was solo again.

Later that summer, I was in the area for a week and asked about doing some more flying. The owner said he wasn't busy during the week and handed me the logbooks and the keys and said "Pay me when you're done." A wonderful week of flying and not too expensive - $100 per hour wet!

[Gertrude the Wombat]

OK, so one day my family went climbing around on Mt Doom and I had a lesson in the local 206 on floats.

A day or two later the idea was that I (with the instructor) would fly them to have a look at where they'd been walking.

"OK, you can see the mountain, aim at it and climb to 10,000'" I was told.

Yeah, right. With very careful tuning of all the engine and propellor controls we could just about get to 9,500', not quite high enough to see into the crater, with all those people in the back. (Some people take a seat out of a 206 when they put it on floats, so that nobody is daft enough to try to put six people in it, but not this one.)

But the instructor had been here before. "Well, what we do now is try to gain the last 100' or so by ridge soaring along the crater edge." I wasn't sure I believed this, as a 206 on floats has got to be one of the least likely gliders ever, but we gave it a go. Without success.

At some point during this exercise the instructor had turned round to talk to my family in the back (the intercom didn't cover everyone), then there was a bump (well, fair enough, we were flying around in the wind that was swirling around a mountain top) ... and the engine note dropped substantially. That meant we were going down, like it or not, as it had been taking all available power to hold our height.

"We're going for the lake" said the instructor, taking control, putting the nose down, fiddling with the trim. I wasn't particuarly bothered, because from 9,500' we were easily outpacing the slope of the mountain so with some power left we had minutes and minutes to sort out and deal with the problem.

[The reaction of the kids in the back: one decided that they were never going in a light aircraft again, and hasn't; the other decided "well, there are two people up front who know what they're doing, and there isn't anything I can do anyway, so I might as well carry on looking out of the window" - that one has been flying with me since.]

So, as trained, I started working round the controls and instruments in an arc from bottom right round to bottom left. On spotting that the mixture knob appear to have been pulled out much further than either of us had pulled it deliberately I pointed at it and started speaking ... just as the instructor was reaching out and re-adjusting it, having spotted it half a second before me.

Power restored, carried on with the flight. The whole episode lasted no more than maybe ninety seconds, but it was real whilst it was happening!

Lesson learned: the training works. (Fly the aeroplane, then decide where you're going, then try to suss out what's wrong with the engine.)

So how did the mixture knob magically pull itself out a couple of inches? My theory is that the instructors knee was resting against it whilst he was turned round talking to the people in the back, and when we hit the bump of turbulence his knee pushed the knob outwards. This would only work, of course, if the friction device had failed or slipped, but it was a sufficiently old and tired aeroplane that that wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Chatting to some other floatplane pilot, in some other part of NZ, a week or so later, we get told:

"Ah yes, he rented that 206 in, because his own one is in the shop following the engine failure a few weeks ago. He put it down on the lake without any trouble."

My reaction: jolly good, we'd been flying with someone who was in very current practice at getting engine-less 206s down onto the water safely.

My wife's reaction: if we'd known this guy was in the habit of flying clapped-out old wrecks whose engines fail every five minutes we'd maybe not have gone flying with him.

[mary meagher]

Gertrude, I love your story! combines all sorts of hazards into one single flight....you have tried ridge soaring in a glider, I hope! having one's family on board is always a stress test.

I got my seaplane rating at Jack Brown's in Florida, highly to be recommended and lots of fun in an uncomplicated J3. As the home lake was a bit small, takeoff speed was achieved by going around in circles. Worked eventually.
Most lakes in Florida are OK to use; but EVERYTHING ELSE has the right of way. That includes swimmers, boats, birds, aligators...because they have no idea what a floatplane requires, so they won't give way...probably won't even notice you. I particularly enjoyed the glassy water approach and touchdown. Its useful on other surfaces as well.

But when they hand you the license with the endorsement, one still is not permitted to take the J3 away solo; gotta go buy your own! or go to Canada...

[S-Works]

I did my seaplane rating at Jacks and don't remember the home lake being small enough to do a confined water take off. A couple of lakes over certianly was.

I go back once a year and fly there and the welcome is always warm and friendly. If you go back regularly enough you are permitted to take the Cubs away on your own. They are obviously just careful with who they let use them and findng slots in a busy schedule is not easy.

I am off to Como in a couple of weeks for a change. Probably won't effect my Jack Beowns ritual but it's nice to fly floats somewhere else. Then it's Norwy in the summer hopefully.

I do envy the Canucks and Yanks with their endless choice of open water to enjoy. Makes you realiae why they see the Brits as such stuffed shirts.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

....you have tried ridge soaring in a glider, I hope!
'Fraid not, my glider flying consists of a single circuit. I was however vaguely aware of the concept and extremely sceptical about a 206 doing it!

Very interesting it was too, my one circuit, but I'm afraid it confirmed my prejudice about gliding - you spend hours hanging around on the ground for a single ten minute flight.

At least the instructor wasn't trying to teach me to fly, he was only telling the differences from power flying - this was an evening at the gliding club for members of the power flying club.

(Anyway, if we had landed on the lava there's at least a possibility that most of the energy would have gone into tearing the floats to shreds rather than into tearing the people to shreds.)

I got my seaplane rating at Jack Brown's in Florida
I had a bunch of lessons in BC, in a Super Cub, but I didn't quite get good enough to be allowed out solo (I'm sure that I could manage it these days, but back then I'd only just regained my PPL after several years of spending all my money on child care rather than aeroplanes).

One of the things I was told there was that if we ran out of engine over land we'd land on a road rather than the trees, and he didn't expect that putting it down on mud would do much damage to the floats.

And I got to do the flying in a chartered Beaver in BC (not the one on the left - got to protect the guilty, I didn't ask as to the legality of the guy chucking the control column over to me - not dual controls, this was a "either pilot can fly, but only one at a time" aircraft).

[9 lives]

Floatplanes are not noted for being good gliders. I refined the gliding technique for the 182 amphibian as a part of preparing to train the owner. The most safe glide, for the purpose of landing at the bottom was 85 KIAS, with a 12 degree glide path angle. It's kinda like a helicopter autorotation, you gotta time the flare perfectly. But, once you perfect it, it works the same way onto a runway as on to the water.

The Teal, and a Lake Amphibian both glide nicely at 80 MPH. But done right, you can get very pleasing power off landings. These two aircraft, being flying boats, are best landed on the step, rather than full stall landings. Floatplanes like full stall landings, flying boats, much less so. The Lake is a delightful flying plane, much better than the ill informed rumours which seem to circulate. The Teal is not as nice to fly, but is superior to the Lake on the water in a number of ways - it's always a compromise....

Me, in my friend's floatplane pond:

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