no problem - am also off on hols soon (EAA Oshkosh) so sometime in August will be fine.

DH106:

The Cat has a very narrow pitch range on the water or it will commence to porpoise.

The safe range is limited to 5 degrees of pitch change..
..

..the best attitude is about 3 degrees nose up...however if you are to nose low it will build a bow wave that forces the nose up, and when it reaches around 7 degrees of nose up the aft part of the hull will force the nose down, once this occillation begins things happen very, very fast and complete loss of control will occur by three occillations resulting in distruction of the airplane.

The weakest link in the operation of a Cat on the water is the nose gear doors, unless they are rigged properly they will tear off if you submerge them in the water at high speed, and that is just about unrecoverable.

That is a very simple and short explination, if you are really interested in learning the finer points of how to fly a Cat get in touch with the Dutch guys, they are very good and are current on the Cat.

Also the group in New Zealand have a very good track record with regard to water operations.

It's not that I do not want to help its just that I am burnt out and want to start living like a normal person and do something besides fly airplanes.

Once again I highly recommend the Dutch guys because they do a lot of water work with their Cat.

Chuck E.

Chuck -

Appreciate that you need to rest after hauling Cats all over for a lifetime.

BUT - even if you stay at home there's always the internet, where you can give us novices good advice. Trust you have transferred neccessary competence to the Dutch guys at Lelystad.

Seems there is a gap between oldies and newbies these days. Wonder why "someone" never bothered to teach their kids the tricks.

Read a piece about keeping an old US WWII bomber flying. Their problem was getting competent flight-engineers: An even more threathened species than sea-pilots!

Regards, Nardi (also nearly extinct)

Chuck, you stated:

"The Cat has a very narrow pitch range on the water or it will commence to porpoise."

After reading C Baj's book on sea-flying (Lake-pilot), this seems to be a trait for flying boats, small or large?

Do enjoy those tidbits of knowledge that you enstowe on us.

Hope you'll stay tuned so we can learn more. :O

Thanks for the info Chuck - very interesting again.

Wasn't the breach of the nose gear doors the main cause of the accident to Plane Sailing's Cat VP-BPS in 1998? It does seem they were an Achilies Heel.