Saw it on the cover of Flying and thought "that's cool".

Up to 12 of your best friends flying 180kts to some remote island sounds like a good idea to me.

http://www.dornierseaplane.com/



Probably old news... but still cool!

That would most likely be the first thing I would buy after winning the lotto.That thing is unreal.

Low Rider,, could you land that seaplane on the lake,,at Lake Tahoe ??

Great idea. Take your 12 good buds and have them each kick in $500,000 each and they could become 1/12th owner of a Seastar!!! And each of them are alloted about 250 pounds each for them and booze, food, etc. Sounds pretty good.

52Romeo wrote:Low Rider,, could you land that seaplane on the lake,,at Lake Tahoe ??

All day long,,,,,,do you mean with the high elevation or is Tahoe open to seaplanes.?

low rider wrote:

52Romeo wrote:Low Rider,, could you land that seaplane on the lake,,at Lake Tahoe ??

All day long,,,,,,do you mean with the high elevation or is Tahoe open to seaplanes.?

Isn't Homewood a registered seaplane base?

Homewood is, or was when Mike Brown had the place, it's been a few decades since I flew with those guys. And Tahoe is open to seaplanes.

Gump

The anchor is still on the sectional,but there is nobody home in homewood,There is a 185 amphib that comes and goes near there and thats about it.

FloatFlyer wrote:Great idea. Take your 12 good buds and have them each kick in $500,000 each and they could become 1/12th owner of a Seastar!!! And each of them are alloted about 250 pounds each for them and booze, food, etc. Sounds pretty good.

When I ran the numbers for the Seastar, after putting someone in each seat, there was only enough useful load left over to carry fuel to fly for about 150 miles. Pretty short legs!

Haven't heard so much as a "peep" of new information or news about it in almost 2 years. I wonder if they're actually making any progress on new production up there in Montreal.

I'm unimpressed. Sorry, but Dornier set the bar for coolness in 1929 when the released the Do X.

I have one of those and fly it all the time. Mine was free.

scroll down to the last one on the page and get your Seastar:
http://www.simviation.com/fs2004props69.htm

The one I have is in Kenmore Air colors.

mountainmatt wrote:Saw it on the cover of Flying and thought "that's cool".

Up to 12 of your best friends flying 180kts to some remote island sounds like a good idea to me.

http://www.dornierseaplane.com/



Probably old news... but still cool!

Matt..this seaplane will do you absolutely no good out there in the dry plains of eastern Colorado, and beside where would you put the 31" Bushwheels?

My dream plane after the Lotto as well.

150Mike wrote:

FloatFlyer wrote:Great idea. Take your 12 good buds and have them each kick in $500,000 each and they could become 1/12th owner of a Seastar!!! And each of them are alloted about 250 pounds each for them and booze, food, etc. Sounds pretty good.

When I ran the numbers for the Seastar, after putting someone in each seat, there was only enough useful load left over to carry fuel to fly for about 150 miles. Pretty short legs!

Haven't heard so much as a "peep" of new information or news about it in almost 2 years. (going on 3 years now!) I wonder if they're actually making any progress on new production up there in Montreal.

Running the numbers the other way, it turns out that if you simply fill the fuel tanks, THAT puts it over its certified max gross weight - without so much as a pilot on board!

Think about that. A line boy who is just doing his job can ground it!

This has been on ebay for quite a while. Out of my price range but looks like a nice plane.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/2000-Sea ... 500wt_1182

There's a guy at my airport who tells me he's involved with this Dornier seaplane project. I don't know if he is gonna be a (or the) US sales rep or just what. I believe it is currently undergoing certification, no doubt a long drawn-out process.
Apparently Dornier had plans early-on to introduce an LSA seaplane, but the design outgrew LSA limitations in pretty short order.
I hate to say it, but talking to this guy it sounds like the old expression about making a small fortune in aviation by starting out with a large one might be applicable to this endeavor. Is there really enough market for this aircraft to cover design & certification costs, let alone any profit?

hotrod150 wrote:There's a guy at my airport who tells me he's involved with this Dornier seaplane project. I don't know if he is gonna be a (or the) US sales rep or just what. I believe it is currently undergoing certification, no doubt a long drawn-out process.
Apparently Dornier had plans early-on to introduce an LSA seaplane, but the design outgrew LSA limitations in pretty short order.
I hate to say it, but talking to this guy it sounds like the old expression about making a small fortune in aviation by starting out with a large one might be applicable to this endeavor. Is there really enough market for this aircraft to cover design & certification costs, let alone any profit?

I assume that you meant besides or in addition to the Seastar 'cuz it's a long way away from an LSA. It's up around 10,000 lbs with two 500 shp PT6A-135A* turbines.... (*per TCDS A62EU - Wikipedia claims they are PT6A-112 engines.)

(Wikipedia lists a maximum gross weight of 9,259 lbs but FAA TC A62EU lists a max gross take-off weight of 10,141 lbs.)

What kind of time frame are you talking about in regard to a Dornier LSA project in terms of "early on"? The Seastar was designed and first built in the 1980's....

According to Wikipedia again, the first flight of the original prototype was August 17, 1984 and the second, definitive example flew for the first time on April 24, 1987.

They sure have been taking their time working up toward real production....

FRom what the guy's told me, I think they had the idea of an LSA seaplane early-on but decided to go for the full-size market instead. Maybe it's a single-engine version of this twin, I don't know. He showed me a magazine article about it a couple years ago, but it was a german magazine written in german so I didn't glean much information from it! But it looked to me like all the illustrations were computer-generated, so at that point there was no actual prototype.