Water Landing's
I have always found Sea Planes to be beautiful and fasinating. I grew up driving our family boat around Paintsville Lake. Recently, I have been skiing with a good friend (Howard) who is into barefoot water skiing. I love being out on the water. I had been talking to a few pilots who did their sea plane rating and they mentioned this famous sea plane training facility near Orlando. I decided to check it out.
Mike and I have always enjoyed learning new things together. We rarely go on vacation to relax. This vacation was no different. The course had us flying over 3 hours a day in a Piper J3 Cub and making over 25 landings a day on water. It was more work than I expected. But I enjoyed the view and the challenge. My Dad has been such a big part of my flying career. He taught me to fly and we have even been able to do our muti-engine rating together when I was in college. I asked him to join us for this rating since I thought it would be fun to do another rating with my favorite flight instructor. He initially said he wasn't interested and at some point he changed his mind.
October 16th the three of us arrive in Winter Haven, Florida which is about an hour outside of Orlando and 1.5 hours outside of Tampa. It is a small city of around 20,000 people and there are a group of cities that are kind of connected and it is around 100,000 people total. There are little round lakes everywhere. Occasionally we saw a gator swimming around. From the air you can see Citrus fields everywhere. Some of the oranges are starting to get ripe. Which is quite exciting in this part of the country. Mike started the training first and Dad and I sat around talking and reading most of the day. I took lots of pictures. It was really quite sad to watch all of these planes taking off without me. I could hardly sleep because I couldn't wait to get out there. The next day I was out on the water soaking up the awesome views. Morgan is my instructor and she has to hand prop the airplane since it doesn't have an electrical system. She gets it started and tells me to bring the power back and she jumps inside. We put our headsets on, the window and door stay open the entire flight. The wind is distracting at first but I get used to the noisey conditions and cool air. Morgan (my female flight instructor) sits in the front and I am in the back. The cub has a stick that is quite heavy. My instructor is constantly telling me to hold the stick back. My arms are sore from holding the stick back. We land and takeoff around 15 times in one flight. Doing different kinds of maneuvers that are required to be demonstrated for the sea plane rating. Step taxi, plow turns, glassy water takeoff and landing, confined area takeoff, and rough water takeoff and landing become the new procedures to learn. I try to remember when and what the water rudder is used for. At the end of the first flight I thought I was doing pretty well. We went to lunch and came back for round two. It felt like I did everything wrong that time. I had trouble remembering which procedure went with which maneuver. My favorite thing is when we were out in the middle of this lake and she turned off the engine. She asked if I would like to get out and of course I did. we just floated around for about ten minutes before practicing some sailing techniques with no wind. I am sure that was expensive but it was worth it I had fun but I was starting to wonder what I had gotten myself into. Mike passed his checkride. But Mike is.....well Mike. He knows how to do things. I was here for fun but now I have a checkride to prepare for. The Rangers are in the playoffs against New York. I have to watch the rest of the game and it ends late. We are supposed to be at the sea plane base around 7:00 am. I do get some sleep and we are back in the air/water by 7:30 am. We do all those maneuvers plus the engine failure which is easy. There is no wind and believe it or not it is harder to land a sea plane on a glassy lake than with a little wind. I get better then I screw up the confined aera takeoff to avoid hitting some ducks. She is wondering about me now. I prove to her that I am ok and I won't do that again and she signs me off to take the checkride. I fly with John who gives two of these checkrides a day. He knows everything there is to know about the sea plane. We fly for 45 minutes after a 30 minute oral on everything he thinks I should know about a sea plane. I fly pretty well. Except the docking that Morgan and I did not do. I try to explain how to dock to him by my experience with a boat. He decides to show me and it is simply amazing how well he did it. I just drove it up to the ramp when we were finished. They have a first class operation @ Jack Brown's Sea Plane Base. Mike, Dad and I really enjoyed our time together. We helped each other and talked through the maneuvers together. I think this rating was exactly what we needed to give us an excuse to talk about something different. Now we can talk about the water conditions, plow turns and confined area takeoffs like we are professionals. And Mike can show me every sea plane he finds in trade a plane until I cave in.
Mike and I have always enjoyed learning new things together. We rarely go on vacation to relax. This vacation was no different. The course had us flying over 3 hours a day in a Piper J3 Cub and making over 25 landings a day on water. It was more work than I expected. But I enjoyed the view and the challenge. My Dad has been such a big part of my flying career. He taught me to fly and we have even been able to do our muti-engine rating together when I was in college. I asked him to join us for this rating since I thought it would be fun to do another rating with my favorite flight instructor. He initially said he wasn't interested and at some point he changed his mind.
October 16th the three of us arrive in Winter Haven, Florida which is about an hour outside of Orlando and 1.5 hours outside of Tampa. It is a small city of around 20,000 people and there are a group of cities that are kind of connected and it is around 100,000 people total. There are little round lakes everywhere. Occasionally we saw a gator swimming around. From the air you can see Citrus fields everywhere. Some of the oranges are starting to get ripe. Which is quite exciting in this part of the country. Mike started the training first and Dad and I sat around talking and reading most of the day. I took lots of pictures. It was really quite sad to watch all of these planes taking off without me. I could hardly sleep because I couldn't wait to get out there. The next day I was out on the water soaking up the awesome views. Morgan is my instructor and she has to hand prop the airplane since it doesn't have an electrical system. She gets it started and tells me to bring the power back and she jumps inside. We put our headsets on, the window and door stay open the entire flight. The wind is distracting at first but I get used to the noisey conditions and cool air. Morgan (my female flight instructor) sits in the front and I am in the back. The cub has a stick that is quite heavy. My instructor is constantly telling me to hold the stick back. My arms are sore from holding the stick back. We land and takeoff around 15 times in one flight. Doing different kinds of maneuvers that are required to be demonstrated for the sea plane rating. Step taxi, plow turns, glassy water takeoff and landing, confined area takeoff, and rough water takeoff and landing become the new procedures to learn. I try to remember when and what the water rudder is used for. At the end of the first flight I thought I was doing pretty well. We went to lunch and came back for round two. It felt like I did everything wrong that time. I had trouble remembering which procedure went with which maneuver. My favorite thing is when we were out in the middle of this lake and she turned off the engine. She asked if I would like to get out and of course I did. we just floated around for about ten minutes before practicing some sailing techniques with no wind. I am sure that was expensive but it was worth it I had fun but I was starting to wonder what I had gotten myself into. Mike passed his checkride. But Mike is.....well Mike. He knows how to do things. I was here for fun but now I have a checkride to prepare for. The Rangers are in the playoffs against New York. I have to watch the rest of the game and it ends late. We are supposed to be at the sea plane base around 7:00 am. I do get some sleep and we are back in the air/water by 7:30 am. We do all those maneuvers plus the engine failure which is easy. There is no wind and believe it or not it is harder to land a sea plane on a glassy lake than with a little wind. I get better then I screw up the confined aera takeoff to avoid hitting some ducks. She is wondering about me now. I prove to her that I am ok and I won't do that again and she signs me off to take the checkride. I fly with John who gives two of these checkrides a day. He knows everything there is to know about the sea plane. We fly for 45 minutes after a 30 minute oral on everything he thinks I should know about a sea plane. I fly pretty well. Except the docking that Morgan and I did not do. I try to explain how to dock to him by my experience with a boat. He decides to show me and it is simply amazing how well he did it. I just drove it up to the ramp when we were finished. They have a first class operation @ Jack Brown's Sea Plane Base. Mike, Dad and I really enjoyed our time together. We helped each other and talked through the maneuvers together. I think this rating was exactly what we needed to give us an excuse to talk about something different. Now we can talk about the water conditions, plow turns and confined area takeoffs like we are professionals. And Mike can show me every sea plane he finds in trade a plane until I cave in.
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