Page 8 - Nov22T

The C180 received a complete makeover.
the rotating rotor system to cushion the touchdown that inevitably follows. The outcome is sort of like stalling an airplane at 50 feet above the ground.
So after f lying helicopters until I satisfied that itch, I started to think about other types of flying that were truly relaxed and casual. What also came to my mind was the f loat f lying I had done some 30 to 40 years ago. After getting my float rating back in my 20s, I spent several hundred hours instructing in those airplanes. Most often the instructional f lights were in underpowered Taylor Craft. But they at least had electrical systems and starters, so we didn’t need to balance ourselves out on the end of the float, hand-propping the machine from be- hind the propeller.
The freedom to land on the water pretty much anywhere we wanted impressed me almost as much as flying over the Everglades in the Cub five years before. A couple of decades later, when I was living in a big house on a large lake and no longer dirt-poor, I decided (like several of my neighbors) that having a float plane tied to the dock in front of the house would be a magical thing to do. So I bought a Cessna 185 on Edo floats and spent 10 years flying it throughout the Northwest and into Canada, all VFR and generally below 1,000 feet. With
6 • TWIN & TURBINE / November 2022
time I found the only problem with this was getting fuel.
In the Seattle area at the time, there were only two places where you could fuel a float plane. One was in Kenmore at the north end of Lake Washington, the other at Renton, at the far south end of the lake. Now, the lake I lived on happened to be 30 to 50 miles north of those locations, and deadheading down there to get fuel before depart- ing on a northbound trip got to be kind of old. I started looking for a set of amphibious floats to fix this problem, but other life events inter- vened, and we wound up moving off the lake before I could pursue that. The other tricky thing I remember about f lying f loats was trying to dock the airplane in a tight spot when the wind was blowing without embarrass- ing myself. Traditionally, float planes
(unless turbine) do not have brakes or reverse thrust...this can make for some tense moments.
Then there passed a period where I personally owned several different multi-engine airplanes, the last being a Cessna 340, which we flew most often in the low flight levels IFR all over the continent. I also returned to f lying professionally, but nearly always in turbine aircraft, often Lears and Citations. This was interesting, but from FL450 at night, you really don’t see much, and the pressurized cabin smells like whatever the pas- sengers in the back are drinking. Not at all like the Everglades just 200 feet below in the Piper Cub. Ah, for the simpler days.
So, while still owning the C340 and the R44, I started thinking about
All round dials were replaced with Garmin flat panel displays.
Aerocet 3500 model amphibian floats awaiting installation.