Just putting it out there as Ive been seeing you guys throw up a heep of ski Videos and photos latley, and as a fella thats never seen snow, it has me curious! what is it like to fly with skis on?

how does taxing work? is it the same? do you still have a steerable tail wheel?

what about braking? is there such thing, or is a case of closed eyes, clenched butt cheeks and hope for the best?

what sort of difference does it make to take off performance, does the snow create drag or is it lovely and slippery?

how d you know what snow you can land on or not? or will the skis just have you sitting on any snow, no matter how deep? (I think I saw a photo MTV put up once that says no, depth does matter!)

what about ice? can you put them down on ice? and what is ice like? is that slippery? I heard its actually really draggy which seems so weird to me!

anyway as I said, this is simply out of curiosity, looking outside I don't see that I'm going to be doing any ski flying anytime soon!

Zane created this cool segment of this web site called a "Knowledge Base".

Check it out: https://www.backcountrypilot.org/knowle ... ski-flying

Maybe not all the answers to your question, but give it a read, then if you still have questions, post them up.

MTV

Look at my youtube channel. I have several videos of ski flying in my Kitfox.

Timbo,

These are Advisory Circulars (ACs) which introduce Ski Flying, Mountain Flying, and Flat Light/Snow practices. They are free to download and can be kept on your iPAD (or similar) for reference. I personally still use paper because it allows for personal notations easier than the electronic version. Also, being able to transport yourself in snow helps too. Research cross country skiing, ice climbing, and cold weather survival. Snow is beautiful. (14) days until Summer for you and (14) days till Winter for us blokes.

http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/seaplane_handbook/media/faa-h-8083-23-1.pdf

http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/advisory_circulars/index.cfm/go/document.information/documentID/22294

http://www.faasafety.gov/gslac/alc/libview_normal.aspx?id=6844

where actually 8 days into summer, summer starts December for us, December January February is our summer

Ski flying is great!!!! Lots more places to land, and much easier in tailwheel aircraft. Ice and packed snow can be a bit jarring so you want so land soft on that stuff. You tend to stop pretty fast in soft snow. Taxi in ice is done at low rpm, drop a mag and pull carb heat if you need to. Slowing down on ice or hard pack can be done with big tail wags. They do make ski brakes for ice. New snow just land and keep the power on to build long straight runway double teardrop, or racetrack. Don't stop, go around until you have run it 3-4 times. Learn to do run up check on the go. Dress to walk home. Lots more to learn but overall some of the most fun flying I have done.

DrifterDriver wrote:where actually 8 days into summer, summer starts December for us, December January February is our summer

Technically Summer in the Southern Hemisphere starts:

21-DEC-2014 23:03 Z http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solstice

DENNY wrote:Ski flying is great!!!! Lots more places to land, and much easier in tailwheel aircraft. Ice and packed snow can be a bit jarring so you want so land soft on that stuff. You tend to stop pretty fast in soft snow. Taxi in ice is done at low rpm, drop a mag and pull carb heat if you need to. Slowing down on ice or hard pack can be done with big tail wags. They do make ski brakes for ice. New snow just land and keep the power on to build long straight runway double teardrop, or racetrack. Don't stop, go around until you have run it 3-4 times. Learn to do run up check on the go. Dress to walk home. Lots more to learn but overall some of the most fun flying I have done.

sounds like its a whole different world of aviation! and a bucket load of fun!

Despite how many times I've been told, it still seems weird to think of snow as being anything other than as soft as cotton balls! it just looks so fluffy! the idea of snow being hard or jarring is just weird! I guess its a bit like people asking me what clouds feel like expecting them also to be like a cotton ball.

I thought I saw snow once when I was 12 years old. i was lucky enough to go to Canada and america for a month in each. we went to a place called the athabasca glacier where you go up in big snow bus's. It was a back packers tour so there was a number of us going up together, including a lovely 18 year old girl who kinda took me under her wing and kept an eye out for me so my mum could hang out with the other old folk! while on the glacier i picked up what I thought was the snow on the road, and made a snow ball. I threw it at her and got a perfect hit square in the middle of her face. when she dropped to the ground unconscious with a broken and bleeding nose, i found out that it wasn't snow at all, but churned up ice from the tires of the buses. by packing it into a "snow ball" I had effectively thrown a cricket sized ball of solid ice square at her face........mum went back to looking after me the rest of the trip........

Great fun when things go right. It's all about the turn around prior to takeoff, the flying part is easy. It really makes you think, I have never juggled so many different factors as when hill landing on skis, think of a normal off airport landing times two as far as all the things needing to be done right. Having no brakes is the final factor, the punch line to the comedy of ski flying! One neat thing about it, as this pictures shows, is how you can land a site and then after takeoff eyeball your tracks, kind of like a GPS set in tracking mode, you have a visual record of how the landing, turnaround, and takeoff went. Handy.

A while back I saw a video of a super cub landing on ice. The skis had metal brakes that dug into the ice and made for some short landings. You could also just lock one side and make turns easily, seemed like a pretty cool idea.

SA Maule wrote:Two things on my bucket list, I want to land on snow and what to do a float conversion, that is definitely not going to happen in South Africa . We get snow here once every 10 or 15 years and never more than an inch. The upside however is we have 300 + clear sky days a year

Same story for me to mate! A float conversion and tey ski flying! I rekon we would have much the same weather patterns as you