Tom,

We ride the outer edge of the virga, which is up air.

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North River wrote:Good for you Moto for going out and having fun in your airplane! I don't get the negative responses. Yeah you could bend metal on any off-airport landing. So what? You could also die at home of obesity and boredom from not doing anything risky. Regardless, your passion for backcountry flying shows through.

Man I am SO on board with this point of view.

As far as anyone being able to do it I'd say no. To land precisely on the intended mark at precisely the right airspeed and attitude is not something any pilot can do.

A few things come to mind with this landing.

First of all it would have been better to try with a rental airplane

For an soft or off field landing in a nose wheel plane, if you value your nose wheel and firewall, it is wise to keep the nose up on landing even without water.

You can plainly see the nose wheel digging into the water and the nose of the plane dropping in the splash zone.
Had the water been a little deeper I suspect the plane would have flipped over. Its hard to say how much deeper exactly.

The video of the guy in the zenith in deep water, he was careful to keep his nose up throughout the ski and he kept his speed up pretty good. If his nose wheel came down then things could get ugly fast.

Just speculation... I suspect the elevator was all the way back on motoadve's 182 and it still wasn't close to enough authority to hold the nose up.

TangoFox wrote:A few things come to mind with this landing.

First of all it would have been better to try with a rental airplane

For an soft or off field landing in a nose wheel plane, if you value your nose wheel and firewall, it is wise to keep the nose up on landing even without water.

You can plainly see the nose wheel digging into the water and the nose of the plane dropping in the splash zone.
Had the water been a little deeper I suspect the plane would have flipped over. Its hard to say how much deeper exactly.

The video of the guy in the zenith in deep water, he was careful to keep his nose up throughout the ski and he kept his speed up pretty good. If his nose wheel came down then things could get ugly fast.

Just speculation... I suspect the elevator was all the way back on motoadve's 182 and it still wasn't close to enough authority to hold the nose up.

Yes elevator aft, coming in at minimum speed and power on, my intention was as you described , and not drop the nose in the splash zone, for that to happen I would have needed more speed.
I studied the landing zone in advance, and could see how shallow was the water, so in worst case scenario and the nose drops , it was shallow enough to not complicate things.(which is what happened).

It was a good apparent brisk walk rate of closure approach. I really don't see, other than making an exciting video, the point of skiing to the beach. Why not slow down enough to land on the beach.

Motoadve made an exciting video with an appropriate slow approach with a nose gear airplane.

Using water to slow, up to the point of prop strike or nose over, makes energy management sense. Skiing to the beach doesn't.

I'm all for having fun in my airplane, but I admit to not being a good enough pilot to guarantee that I can pull off a landing like that 100% of the time. Most of the time isn't good enough. I just don't want to take the chance. But I have no problem with those who do it, so long as no one gets hurt.

Cary

I did some water skiing last year about this time. I waited until after hunting season and for my IA to return from his flying gig just in case. I had a blast and learned a few things along the way. Our water level comes up in Aug and the sandbars get a lot smaller. Understanding how the plane reacts on water really does open up a lot of landing places for me in case of engine issues. I have the number of the helo recovery guy on laminated list with the sat phone. If I can get the plane down in one piece, he can get me to a long strip to get home. I don't ever plan on spinning a plane on any of my flights, but I have done spin training, kind of the same thing in my mind.
DENNYT

Neat video, good on you for sharing it. That is a really nice looking aircraft you've got there.

My 2c?
If it was hydroplaning, there would be less splash going forwards and sideways, also the tires would not be going in so deep.
To my eye. It looked like punching straight through the surface into shallow water.


IF the water was deeper, or you hadn't run up onto the beach when you did; personally I bet you'd have flipped upside-down. I speak from firsthand experience.

Yee-haw!!

Did you win that T shirt Hotrod 180 ?
Of course this can happen easily, exactly why I landed first on the dry part of the gravel bar, to check how deep was the water .