Well I guess that's the second best kind..

He was up on step pretty quick, so looked more like a repositioning flight than try to move a jag of freight. Crunching ice with the floats can ruin your day, even taxiing through the real thin stuff always made me nervous. I've had the booming crew run their boats around more than a few times during a cold snap so I could make it to the dock.

Tight Beaver

Now that video is a different type of porn

TO was good, but I didn't like seeing him fly over those airplanes, hangars, people @ 100'.

NimpoCub wrote:TO was good, but I didn't like seeing him fly over those airplanes, hangars, people @ 100'.

Shit does happen.

You have to wonder on the crash video why the little voice in his head never said pull the power I am not going to make this.

I try and listen to the little voice in my head but as you can guess I have had my own brain farts over the years, what does not kill us hopefully makes us better at making the decisions we need to make when we need to make them.

The guy taking the video was also someone who should have been listening to the little voice saying you are to close to this!

Mauleguy wrote:You have to wonder on the crash video why the little voice in his head never said pull the power I am not going to make this.

I try and listen to the little voice in my head but as you can guess I have had my own brain farts over the years, what does not kill us hopefully makes us better at making the decisions we need to make when we need to make them.

The guy taking the video was also someone who should have been listening to the little voice saying you are to close to this!

Or why he didnt turn and follow the lake a bit longer. Looks like open water at the end of the video.
That said, I've also had a hard time listening to the little voice and it did cost me a new empenage...

That failed takeoff video is what happens when you hold the airplane in the 'climb-on-step' configuration instead of letting it tip over and gain speed after it rides up. It was exacerbated by the fact that he horsed it off the water after using 1/3 of the available runway, which cause him to crash at 1/2 the available runway distance-wise. A bit of a head-scratcher.

Not that gent's first rodeo, I'm told.

The Beaver is VERY intolerant of high AOA. Watch them descend for landing sometime.....nose appears waaaay down. Yard one out of the water and you'd best get the nose down, or it just won't fly. Get the nose down quick and it'll fly in ground effect till it's got enough speed to climb.

Troy is right also, in that he'd have been off the water in half the distance if he'd ever let the plane settle over onto the step.

One winter in Kodiak there was a construction outfit building a runway at Karluk, a village at the west-southwest end of the island. They needed a parts chaser, and they hired a guy to fly a Beaver on floats that they leased from Kenmore. He based it out of Lilly Lake instead of keeping it in salt water at the City Dock all winter. I'd hear him fire up in the morning, with the P&W 985 cranking up, then I'd hear those floats busting ice, as he warmed it up. He'd bust ice to clear a channel, then take off to Karluk. He landed on the Karluk River, which near the bay didn't freeze that winter. Then back to town, and he'd land on the near end of the ice to break it back, taxi to his dock, then go bust more ice. He did that all winter. Kodiak doesn't get REAL cold, but there was some significant ice that winter.

Next spring I was at Kenmore looking for float parts, and lo and behold parked in their yard was that very Beaver. It was out of the water (Kenmore stores all it's floatplanes on land, nothing stays in the water overnight) so I walked over to take a look at the float bottoms.....and they looked practically new. I was amazed, knowing what he'd done with those floats that winter.

Now, taxiing a floatplane in ice, especially fairly thin ice, in a crosswind, is a uniquely bad idea. Don't ask me how I found that out.

MTV

Not that gent's first rodeo, I'm told.

No... His third or fourth I think. Way more money and ego than skill.

Gump