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The seaplane starts its takeoff run with a grunt and a
heave, utterly unlike the smooth acceleration of an airplane on wheels.
Instead of squatting into its nose gear and sprinting forward, the floatplane
points its nose up, blanking out the view forward as it surges against
the wall of water building under the keels. It's like a water-skiing
start, when you absorb all the boat's power through your arms and legs
just to climb to the water's surface.
You wait for that moment when, with a touch of forward yoke, you can
tilt the floats up over the top of the bow wave. As the nose comes level,
you can see again, and there's another surge of acceleration as the
floats begin to plane. The keels skip over the waves in a soft staccato,
and you watch for ducks and flotsam on the runway.
The needle comes off the peg into the white arc, the wings gently lift
the floats from the wavetops and there's a third rush of acceleration
as the water drag falls behind. Forward elevator keeps the wings in
ground effect for a few more seconds. At best climb speed, it's time
to point the nose up again.
I'd always wanted to fly floats. The opportunity came when we moved
from the mountains to an island in Puget Sound, exchanging high density
altitude for high density fog. The bedroom window in our new house overlooked
a salt bay, and my wife soon caught me watching in envy as a heron flapped
low across the water to plop casually onto his favorite fishing spot.
"Get your melancholy face out of here," she ordered. "Go
flying."
Seattle offers several float-flying schools. Best known is Bob Munro's
busy Kenmore Air Harbor, a full-service charter and FBO at the north
end of Lake Washington. Kenmore has an examiner on staff and solo rates
on its Cessna 172 trainers. Their transition package includes six hours
of dual and a check ride for $915.
But I went with Mark Schoening's Sound Flight charter service, located
at Renton Airport on the south end of the lake. Sound Flight has a single
Cessna 172 trainer, but I liked their quiet, personable environment.
I signed up for a $900 float-rating package, which includes eight hours
of dual and all the ground instruction you can stand. The check ride
costs extra. The deciding factor for many pilots will be that you can
fly to Renton on wheels.CFI Teale Mattesen, a patient and enthusiastic
young guy, flipped through my logbook and nodded approvingly at my recent
tailwheel experience. "Most floatplane mishaps are really boating
accidents," he said. "They're mistakes in water handling.
Even more than with a taildragger, you have to fly the plane until it's
tied up." The most important element in safe water flying, Teale
said, is plenty of experience sailing small boats, if only because the
sailor can read the wind in patterns on the water.
On water, after all, the plane handles like a topheavy catamaran --
and you can't lower the sails, because they're bolted on. The moment
you cast off, the plane starts to drift with wind and current. In any
kind of breeze, it weathercocks and swims backward. Directional control
comes only with headway, which requires power. In the interest of a
quick start, certain exceptions are made to standard dry-shod procedures:
prime before shoving off, and make sure the key is in the mag switch.
Push away from the dock, hop in the seat, start the engine, establish
a safe taxi lane and only then worry about oil pressure, amps, seat
position, seat belts, headset and avionics.
Renton is really two separate airports -- a busy tower-controlled field
under the Seattle Class Bravo umbrella, home to Boeing's 757 production
(and the huge Boeing employees' flying club), and Will Rogers-Wiley
Post Seaplane Base, where traffic has to coexist both with Renton aircraft
and a stunning variety of shorebirds. We taxied the 172 over a mile
north while Teale explained local procedures and demonstrated use of
the water rudders, meanwhile watching out for arriving seaplanes, and
sailboarders. The most dangerous traffic element on a hot summer day
is a horde of unpredictably darting jetskiers. With a whining two-stroke
engine between his knees, the jetskier isn't likely even to hear an
approaching aircraft.
Without brakes, run-up is done quickly in a nose-high plow taxi. You
hold the yoke in your gut to keep the long prop out of the spray while
checking mags and carb heat. Then it's time for a clearing turn. With
water rudder up, the plane points into the wind. Ten degrees of flaps,
yoke full back and full power. There's a glorious rush of sound, comprised
of exhaust, prop tips nearing the supersonic, aluminum reverberating
against the pounding of water, and a torrent of spray.
Twenty seconds had us skipping across the light chop. Teale showed me
the correct attitude to avoid "rubbing" the forward keel on
the water (the friction slows you down) or dipping the aft keel (ditto).
At 50 knots the airplane was ready to fly. The flutter of water on sheet
metal fell away.
The extra drag of the floats, along with the big, flat prop, means that
everything seems to happen more slowly than with an equivalent wheeled
aircraft. Cruise speed, for instance, is just 85 knots, Vy 64 and Vx
53, compared to 105, 75 and 59 for a typical "clean" Skyhawk.
Cut the power and the descent rate is brisk. The weight of the floats
makes the plane feel more stable -- airborne, the 172 responds to elevator
and aileron inputs like a 182. And it requires more rudder than a "normal"
172, because at these lower airspeeds there's simply less air passing
around the control surfaces. Coordination is important in part to minimize
the massive drag of the floats, but mostly because, with the prows projecting
well forward of CG, the plane can have marginal directional stability
in a low-speed slip or skid.
It's easy to concentrate on airspeeds and coordination because the panel
is so bloody simple. In a floatplane, IFR means "I follow rivers."
Approaches are out of the question for an aircraft without wheels, and
night landings to an unlighted and unpredictabe surface are a no-no.
So the radio stack consists of a transponder and single nav/comm.
At 1300 feet we turned northeast and cruised toward Lake Sammamish.
Teale asked my opinion of the wind direction and speed, then advised
a standard traffic pattern. "Fly downwind at 1000 feet," he
offered. "Pick your touchdown point. When you're opposite that,
reduce power to 1900 and descend at 70 knots with 10 degrees of flaps.
Crosswind is 1700 rpm, 65 knots and 20 degrees. Final is 1500 rpm, 60
knots and 30 degrees if appropriate. Flare and touch down as if this
were a soft-field landing -- use a little power to kiss the keels onto
the water."
Teale took the controls on short final to show me the touch-down attitude.
Then he followed me through. "Cut power as soon as you're on the
water, and bring the yoke back to counter the forward pitch that happens
as the plane decelerates." Within seconds, we settled off the step
into a displacement taxi. "Drop the water rudders, and you're down,"
Teale said.
After a couple of more landings, Teale began asking for precision placement.
"If you screw up a landing in the middle of the lake, it's a long
swim to shore," he pointed out. "So put it close in. Not so
close that you risk hitting rocks and jetties, and not inside the 8-knot
markers."
There followed practice in rough water take-offs and landings, glassy
water landings, crosswind landings, step-taxi and sailing (the accepted
way to move the plane downwind when a strong breeze won't let you point
the tail upwind). Float flying combined all the exhilarating elements
of flying, sailing and water skiing. I had a lot of fun with simulated
emergency landings -- most of the urgency is lost when the runway is
five miles long and two miles wide. At one point Teale let me set up
for a forced landing in a plowed field before pointing out the long
irrigation ditch on one side. "You could get it on the water, easy,"
he said.
The most fun was docking and beaching. Docking a floatplane is like
putting a 30-foot sailboat alongside the wharf without using the motor.
Judge the wind and current, plan your approach, and if you time it precisely
you can cut power, cut switches, turn the plane through the wind and
coast alongside the dock at walking speed, close enough to step ashore
casually with mooring line in hand. It occurred to me that the old adage
"Any landing you walk away from is a good landing" was really
meant for floatplanes. Any landing you swim away from requires a call
to the NTSB.
To do all this while staying dry requires a certain agility, and sticky
deck shoes. So, for that matter, does preflight inspection. Teale showed
me how to climb over the cowl to reach the starboard float, a maneuver
necessary when you can't dive across the laps of a cabinfull of passengers.
The most treacherous bit is working on a moss-covered timber ramp --
it's like trying to hike up a luge run in galoshes.
Far worse fates await the inattentive pilot than falling in the drink.
Floatplanes can (and do) bury their prows while landing (instant flipover),
dip tips while turning upwind during step taxi (instant cartwheel),
capsize in crosswinds, break up in hard landings and sink at their moorings.
The floatplane is inherently fragile, unstable and prey to corrosion.
After about six hours of fun and games, Teale signed me off for a check
ride. We flew north under a solid thousand-foot overcast to Kenmore,
a regular floatplane marina, where examiner Fred Brink grilled me for
the better part of an hour. He made sure I understood the safe limits
of floatplane operation. How much water can be in the rear compartments
of the floats before the plane is out of balance? (Not very much.) How
do you keep the horizontal tail from burying in the waves when sailing
backward in a strong wind, against the current? (Don't try it.) How
do you know that a mountain lake is big enough to take off from? (Time
an overflight at 90 knots before landing to measure the length, and
check density altitude.)
By the time we went out to the plane, a light rain had begun to fall.
I pumped out the floats and we took off in about five miles visibility.
Fred kept me below 800 feet for a series of landings. Raindrops in the
pitot tube kept the airspeed needle bouncing unpredictably, so I had
to fly largely on attitude and power settings. But the landings all
went smoothly. After forty minutes, Fred told me to head back. "If
you can get me ashore with dry feet, you'll pass," he said. The
pattern was dense with aircraft (and ducks) hustling home before the
weather shut everything down. But I managed to slide in without getting
in anybody's way or soaking Fred's socks.
It's not easy to rent a floatplane. Kenmore has solo rates (about $85/hour)
with fairly severe restrictions: they require a two-hour checkout if
you got your rating elsewhere and permit no salt-water landings. Nor
can you keep the plane overnight. That's not a huge disadvantage --
at midsummer, we get 16 hours of daylight here, more than enough to
time to catch the limit of lake trout.
When I have my own floatplane tied down on the beach, though, I've got
some real trips planned. I want to follow the Columbia River up into
Canada. Fly the islands up to Alaska. Hop up to Whistler, BC, for spring
skiing. And photograph the orca pods on their tuna-fishing expeditions
around the sound.
This story first appeared in Private Pilot Magazine.
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