The floatplane add-on had been on my to-do list and I had been contemplating going to one of the seaplane specialty flight schools and knocking out the rating over a long weekend. As it turned out, the flight school where I have teaching privileges acquired an American Champ Scout (8GCBC). The plane had been on wheels for the winter but as Spring came around the floats were re-installed. The next question, would I be able to instruct on floats after obtaining the add-on? Some of the insurance requirements that I'd heard about required 50, 100 or more hours in type. In this case however, the only insurance requirement was that a designated examiner that was approved by this particular insurance company, sign off with a logbook entry that I was capable and competent to fly with students in the Scout.
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| N186AC |
In early May I started training in the Scout.The flying part wasn't too bad, but learning not to flare like in a land airplane took some getting used to and all the non-flying logistics like operating the float truck, docking, and moving the plane around the dock were the most challenging. Learning how to read the wind is another art to master and I now find myself noticing all kinds of different wind direction indicators around water. An airplane on floats is a big weather vane and seems to have a mind of its own once the wind starts pushing it around. Lots of forethought into which way to launch, takeoff, land, ramp and dock based on wind conditions are all part of a float pilots repertoire.
So, with 9.2 hours under my belt I scheduled the check ride for the commercial ASES add-on and concurrently would get the instructor sign-off to begin teaching in the Scout. Check ride day started out with wind in the low teens, so the DE and I elected to defer our meeting time a couple of hours as the winds were forecast to drop a bit. The oral part of the check ride started just like all the rest and ends up being more of a discussion than a quiz. The examiner asked me about techniques for docking/beaching and gave me a scenario about docking on a river with some prevailing wind. Our discussion lead to determining what the wind/water current ratio was so that you could decide which one would push the airplane more. The take away was that there is a 5:1 ratio of wind speed to water speed. In other words one knot of water current is equal to 4 knots of wind speed. We then talked about weight and balance of the Scout and based on my calculations the examiner (220 lbs) and me (180 lbs) were just within the envelope on the aft CG side. This lead to a question about stability and he asked, if we have an aft CG, what does that do to stall speed? I hadn't really thought about this subject in a while and like most check rides there's always a discussion question that leads down a path that you aren't prepared for. After drawing a picture of a balancing airplane (CFI candidates will remember doing this) I eventually got to the correct answer.
After the oral, we headed out to the dock and I put the plane in the water while the examiner tied off the plane to the dock. Before cast-off we discussed the various flavors of the
W36 Washington One East Channel and West Channel departures. In W36's case it sits at the end of KRNT's runway 16/34 and most of the time take off's are West of the runway 16 center line. But in certain wind conditions, it may be necessary to fly down the runway and join the cross wind departure leg or cross the center line of 16/34 when departing North. We spent some time discussing this and making sure that my intentions (and future student's) are clear to Renton Tower. We then had another discussion about prop safety and he told a story about how a pilot had been killed by a prop strike while docking. In a normal docking scenario, the mixture is set to cutoff as the airplane approaches the dock and then the pilot gets out, hops up on the dock and ties the plane off. In this case the pilot went too far forward on the floats and got hit by the propeller as it wound down. The DE's point was to make sure that you stay clear of the prop while its stopping and the airplane is coasting up to the dock.
The flight was uneventful and I made a series of take offs and landings in mostly rough water conditions. The only surprise was on the last landing when the left window blew open and I thought is was one of those DE induced distractions. Turned out that one of the window latches had vibrated loose, so I secured it and landed normally. The last thing to do was ramp the airplane, load it back on the float truck, and complete the IACRA paper work to issue my temporary pilot certificate with commercial single engine land and sea privileges.
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| On the Water at Lake Sammamish |
