I was watching the live feed from Lake Hood seaplane base couple of months ago for about an hour where the camera was zoomed in on a docked 170/180 listing about 45*. I don't know how they saved it but today it was like nothing happened and was sitting proud by it's own little dock.
I would have gotten a couple of air mattresses or an inflatable boat to slide under the sunken pontoon but the google equivalent duckduckgo didn't turn up any standard procedure.
When flying into an isolated lake and your float suddenly springs a leak, what is onboard that saves your plane and gets you home? Just curious

ried wrote:I was watching the live feed from Lake Hood seaplane base couple of months ago for about an hour where the camera was zoomed in on a docked 170/180 listing about 45*. I don't know how they saved it but today it was like nothing happened and was sitting proud by it's own little dock.
I would have gotten a couple of air mattresses or an inflatable boat to slide under the sunken pontoon but the google equivalent duckduckgo didn't turn up any standard procedure.
When flying into an isolated lake and your float suddenly springs a leak, what is onboard that saves your plane and gets you home? Just curious

If that’s the one I’m thinking of, it was caused by wind. Floats don’t typically spring a BIG leak spontaneously. That’s generally the result of hitting something in the water, like a rock, log, etc.

In that case you get the thing to shore ASAP, like with lots of power, and hope to beach it in shallow water. Maybe. Assuming that’s accomplished, the first task is how to plug the hole. That can be problematic, depending on shape and size of the hole.

But, these kinds of things are VERY rare in the real world.

The one at LHD would be easy enough to get a sling under the down end of the low float, lift it with a forklift/loader and pump it out. Most likely sunk due to wind driven waves running over tops of float, and water filling the float from the pumpouts.

Which is one reason I don’t like parking nose to beach. Heel em up and this is near impossible.

But in the bush.....it’s all about ingenuity.

I landed in a remote lake in an amphib Beaver, and could hear water rushing into float compartment after I shut the engine down. I got back in, fired up and laid the wood to it. Was able to take off before too much water flooded in. The plane was empty, which helped. Flew back to town and landed on wheels. The Bristol 4580 floats had a rubber bladder which the wheel pushed up against when retracted, to provide water tight integrity. That bladder broke. That compartment was the largest on those floats. Flooding it in deep water may not have been good.

In a lot of hours on floats, that’s the only big leak I’ve had.

MTV

Apologies for being off topic but the spruce goose had a lot of beach balls in it to provide flotation in the event of water ingress.

Evergreen museum is well worth the visit.

So here's a thought/question that comes to mind, whitewater kayaker and canoeist secure lightweight airbags in the empty spaces to create flotation and displace water. So unless the float compartment is being utilized as a locker why not fill it with something similar, a preformed airbag thats inflated once inserted. It would/could form itself around the pump out tube so as to not eliminate that ability and otherwise function as they do in a canoe or kayak.

Mapleflt wrote:So here's a thought/question that comes to mind, whitewater kayaker and canoeist secure lightweight airbags in the empty spaces to create flotation and displace water. So unless the float compartment is being utilized as a locker why not fill it with something similar, a preformed airbag thats inflated once inserted. It would/could form itself around the pump out tube so as to not eliminate that ability and otherwise function as they do in a canoe or kayak.

Couple reasons:

1. Anything like that adds weight. Any added weight in a seaplane is unwelcome.

2. Complexity. How would you verify the integrity of the “balloon” on a day to day basis?

3. Pressure. Changes in air pressure will change the size and shape of the “gallons”. May or may not be an issue, but.....

4. But, the most compelling reason that argues against this concept is that seaplane floats have maintained watertight integrity reliably for a hundred years or so and literally millions of flight hours. In other words....there’s no need for such devices.

As I noted earlier, the most likely cause of a big hole in a float would be hitting something. In general, that sort of collision would most likely penetrate the “balloon” as well.

And, again, these kinds of collisions are rare.

MTV

MTV covered it pretty well, so I will just add one note...

Sometimes you can't get it home until somebody comes and fixes it. And it is better to get it fixed than wish you had.

With that in mind...if you have a float that is taking on water, if it starts to go down, the only way to keep it up is to turn toward the sinking float. That is often contrary to the untrained instinctive reaction. People tend to try to lift the float by turning the other way, which might be tied to the thought that you might lift it with the wing (doesn't work at taxi speeds) or by increased planing action (if you are at planing speed it might, I suppose). But if the float starts to go under and you try to lift it by turning away from it, the massive water drag on that float will increase and pretty much you are upside down before you know it.

Last summer I had a chance to visit with a pilot that tried that exact thing. He was sitting on the lake shore and his plane was upside down in the lake. He had punched a hole, verified that it was a bad hole, and taxied out to see if he could taxi safely. He found out he couldn't, but if he had turned toward the sinking float he might have at least made it back to the beach.

Assuming you knew where the leak was, this would stop the leaking and get you home. It would not be a permanent fix, obviously. I used to keep small batches in separate containers in my boat tool box in the event I ever hit a rock and ripped a hole in my boat. It bonds well to aluminum or glass as long as it has time to cure. It will peel off if placed on the outside surface uncured once the speed is up though. However it will adhere well enough not under way and at idle to stop significant leaking and get the compartment pumped out with a hand pump.


Edit: the elders here may provide reasons why this is a bad idea, which it very well could be, especially once you get home and have a hunk of dried epoxy to get off your float. Just throwing it out there....

Over the years, I've seen repair kits with stuff that'll cure underwater to accomplish remote repairs. Fortunately, I've never had to use one.

I brought a 185 into our slip on Lilly Lake on Kodiak one day, with a good bit of wind. Enough wind that getting the plane 90 degrees to the wind was difficult to impossible to get it into the slip. Our slip had a mud bank adjacent, so I stuck the right float fairly hard on that mud bank, shut down and got out to turn the airplane around to get it onto the ramp.

Next morning plane had the leans.....grrrr. Couldn't figure out what I'd done. So, we pulled the plane out of the water, and there was a surgical cut in the bottom of the bow compartment. Whoa! What did I hit that caused that?

Went to our slip, and carefully felt around just below the water line on that mud bank.....and sure enough, there was a really sharp rock embedded in that bank, with the sharp edge outward.

Removed the rock, patched the float and back to work.

But, that was in civilization.....as we know it.

MTV

https://youtu.be/ZvorHXLZbIQ

My fellow sailors may already know about this. Have heard wax toilet rings sans the plastic work equally well and may be cheaper/more readily available depending on what part of the country/world you're in

Actually just returned from a little float flying adventure with a gaggle of buddies at Lake Havasu. The evening conversation got around to water in the floats. On my floats on the Caravan, my major ingress of water is from the hatches on the top. Every compartment has an access hatch with a nice seal around the margin. Unfortunately each cover is held in place with a couple dozen screws. They don't seal really well, rain and splashing rolls over the top of the float, trickling down into the compartment. The huge equipment compartments that have the door on top, seal the worst, allowing a fair bit of water to dribble in as well. So one thing, to protect from rain is to put some kind of cover over the top to keep rain out. You can seal the screws with RTV or the like, but that is messy and leads to a lot of work to open the hatches and it just gets worse each time you do it.

Leaks on the seams of your float can happen as they work over time. One suggestion on re-sealing them was kind of brilliant. Getting sealant into the seam just isn't effective smearing over the seam with your finger. So the suggestion was, adapt a shop vac to your pump out bung. Hook it up and run the vacuum, pull a a slight vacuum in your compartment (helps if you put duct tape over the compartment seams and screws). Then apply your sealant to the seams, and it will be drawn into the seam slightly by the vacuum.

If you get a puncture from whatever you hit, there are a variety of slap on patches you can get from marine supply houses. They set underwater and will get you home, provided they are not huge. If you have a great gash that compromises several compartments, you have a bigger problem that has to be dealt with in the field, but after you have hopefully beached it, on a case by case basis. If you have easy access, like the equipment compartments, you can toss your life preservers into them (inflated). They have about 200 lbs of buoyancy each.