Sea Plane Training

Lysa Wollard and I decided to get our Sea Plane ratings!  Norcal Aviation did the training - Terry Campbell, an FAA Designated Examiner, renowned sea plan pilot and flight instructor did the training.

Lysa, Terri and Bill

We could have found a worse place to be trained....

The training took place in the foothills of the Sierra mountains in northern California near a town named Angels Camp.  The weather was very nice and the water both glassy and choppy.

The plane is a Cessna 150 with floats

The plane was an older Cessna 150 but very comfortable and easy to control.  Taxiing seems to be one of the more difficult aspects of float plane navigation since you don't have anything holding the pontoons straight.  The moment you charge up the engine, the plane starts moving, so you need to know where you intend on going before you start up.

A simple control panel

Everything is simple and easy to read in the plane.  Since you have so much to worry about when flying a sea plane, this is a bonus!

Lysa removing water from the left pontoon

Speaking of pontoons, it was very surprising to me, after reading the book and then doing the pre-flight that sea-plane pontoons can fill up with water.  They are relatively water tight, but still get water in each compartment of the pontoon.  You need to remove this water as part of your pre-flight.

Lysa Wollard landing

Landing a float plane is a lot like landing a normal plane with a number of exceptions:

• You don't necessarily flare

• If the water is glassy clear, you MUST use special landing procedures because of the lack of perspective.  When the water acts like a mirror, it looks like it's not there!

• If the water is choppy, you have to make sure that the front of the pontoon doesn't get caught up on a wave

• more....

As I said, not a bad place to learn (you can see Lysa landing in the distance)

This page was last modified on 12/03/2006