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moisture that tends to get stuck at the highest point on its way eastbound. This phenomenon is what made Sno- qualmie somewhat tricky and a par- ticularly good place for student train- ing. The problem is you cannot see the summit until you are nearly on top of it because it lies around another 90-degree bend in the pass. The drill for students was figuring out how to turn the airplane around in a narrow pass when at the last minute, you dis- cover it is completely blocked by clouds and precipitation. The required maneu- ver called for starting very near the right side of the pass, slowing down to 80 knots, lowering flaps about 10 degrees, and rolling into a 30-degree banked turn toward the rapidly ap- proaching opposite mountainside. The turn itself was quite a safe maneuver once you had been taught how to do it, and most students were amazed the airplane could make a 180-degree turn in such tight quarters.
Now decades later, flying through in the R44, I tried it again and was surprised how tight it seemed to be, even in a helicopter. No wonder the company I was working for required a “mountain checkout” for new pilots. A couple of days later, I am back at KBVS looking into some airport busi- ness when there is a need to do a test flight in an amphibious Carbon Cub. I have about 1,500 hours of seaplane time in all kinds of equipment, from a Grumman Goose to a Beaver to a Cessna 185 and a Lake, but it had been several years since I had f lown one. So, when my fellow corporate pilot doing the test f light invited me along, I gladly accepted. The first thing that came back to mind as I approached the air- plane was how high these amphibious single-engine airplanes sit above the ground. Even a Cub is sitting way up there and requires conveniently placed ladder rungs to reach the bi-fold door. Climbing in the narrow cockpit was somewhat challenging, all the while pushing the control stick out of the way. Funny, but I don’t remember it being that difficult when doing f loatplane instruction in similar Cubs all those years ago.
The Cub’s 180 HP Lycoming lit up without a problem, and we taxied out using differential braking for steering as f loat-based amphibious airplanes
do not have steerable nose wheels. I was a little jerky with it but not enough to make the line guy run for safety at the hangar. A runway takeoff in a f loat- based amphib usually requires a fair amount of back pressure once flying speed is reached because the main gear is aft compared to its ground-based brethren. But even knowing that from distant memory, the amount of back- pressure on the stick in the Cub caught me by surprise. Turning out of the pattern, I noticed the ball way out on one side, simply because I had forgot- ten how much extra rudder is required when turning the airplane with those long floats under it. Once in cruise, we did the required maintenance testing, then flew up to one of the local lakes to refresh those memories.
Landing a floatplane on the water is a completely different experience than on land. For one thing, you have the entire lake before you on which to put the thing down. Another is you absolutely must make sure the gear is up (if amphibious) or it will cause the airplane to flip inverted right at touch down. As this puts the cabin underwa- ter, a number of floatplane pilots and passengers have drowned as a result of the gear down oversight. Another thing you have to figure out once you are sure the gear is up is which way the wind is blowing as float operations are very wind sensitive. The best way to do that is to look at the wave patterns down below and which shoreline is in the lee with no waves at all.
Having worked my way through that little exercise in memory reten- tion, I get the thing lined up to the northwest. I stay way out in the middle of the lake not wanting to bother the residents along the shoreline. But then it becomes apparent that out there, you really have no ground references like trees or houses by which to judge your altitude. Remembering this, and not knowing exactly how high above the lake the floats were, I pitched the airplane for about 65 knots and carried enough power to produce a very grad- ual descent, then just waited for the touchdown to occur. You can cover a lot of water doing this, but luckily the lake had plenty of room. We touched down rather nicely way out at the north end.
Then came the memory phase of what to do after touchdown. There is
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July 2020 / TWIN & TURBINE • 25