I had a question. I have often seen things lashed to the floats or wing struts on bush planes in pictures.

Are there any guidlines to doing such thing or is more of a doing it from pilots judgement/expereince and the fact your outta sight from the feds.

It would be cool to strap a PVC fishing rod holder in place, or develop some kind of streamlined bags than can carry light cargo things like that.

Technically you need an external load permit.....very very hard to come by, now I've never done this.... but skis lash very well to wing struts .... the deal is wide end foward when it comes to canoes boats ect....more information is provided in Dale Deremers guide to seaplane flying.


Mike

I got really excited when I saw the subject of this thread, oh boy, I was really going to learn something. Then I read you want to strap a PVC rod holder onto struts or floats??

How about some info on something that actually counts, like a 8 ft Port=a=bote?

I don't mean to be sarcastic but I would think that something as benign as a pvc rod holder, assuming it is not a 14" culvert, would be pretty easy. I have heard that a moose rack can cause some serious airflow disruption, so maybe I am wrong, again.

When on floats you are a pig anyway (no lipstick) so streamlining isn't a major concern. I need Don C to jump on this!!

REguardless if on floats or not, I have always thought that the struts would possbly be somehwhere you might be able lash something you might not otherwise be able to fit, but is light weight, such as a rod tube or ski's, hell why not even fabricate a soft sided storage bag that straps on the damn thing.

I dont know about that, thats why I asked! Not that I would actually do it, but Again have seen lots of pics with tons of junk strapped to struts in the wilderness.

I know nothing about floats but if all you want to do is add a pvc rod holder why not do that inside? have is stick back into the tailcone, I've seen it done for both fishing poles and golf clubs.

Now attaching a kayak to the bottom of my Luscombe, like a belly pod, would be awesome

rod tube can be long, i just used it as an example. I will probaly never lash anyhting down, just wondering what can be and how its done or if its a trial and errrr' error thing!

Yeah, I have got a dagger and wilderness systems kayak. That would be awesome to strap to the underside! Lets make a kit and stc! lol

This summer while on a Canadian fishing trip, I flew two 14 foot sea kayaks (about 70 pounds each) into a remote lake on my Stinson. For the in trip, I had one on the pilots side (so I could keep an eye on it) and two passengers in addition to myself. Just a slight amount of right rudder to keep it straight. For the flight out I had a kayak on each side, and one passenger, really couldn't tell they were there at all, other than about 5mph slower. The trick is to tie everything real good with strong rope. You don't want forward to back movement, or in and out. The hard part is finding enough good points to tie down to. Don't rely on just bungies to hold something on. The guys who do it a lot build some little brackets on the floats, usually on the ends of the spreader bars for hauling the canoes/boats. We used to be able to carry boats canoes here in MN, and just about every float plane you saw had something hanging off it. The FAA determined the air molecules are different here than 18 miles north of here in Canada, so we can't carry canoes until we cross the border now. Really, external loads (boats canoes), tied well, loaded correctly, aren't much of a deal.

When hauling external loads one should consider the effect on the smooth flow of air over the tail surfaces (the ones that control stuff like up-down, right-left). I once saw a guy try to haul 4 eight foot +- Christmas trees on a 172's lift struts (two trees per side). They literally filled the area between the struts and the wing. He was lucky. He was unable to get airborne on a 3800 foot asphalt runway. Later I asked him if he had thought about how it would fly with severely disturbed air flow over the tail. He looked at me like I was from Mars. My advice: start with small items, on the belly if possible and always tie them ten times as tight as you think they need to be. I once read a story about a guy loosing a 15 foot canoe off of a floatplane. It remained attached by the bow rope to a float strut. It brought the plane out of the air, destroyed the canoe, and gave him a really great story (the one up side to almost killing yourself).

hello

Thats Awesome! More like i was imagining!

BTW, how do you put a picture in a post? I have tried clicking the IMG button then pasting the url then click IMG again to close the tag. It does not work for me?

Hows this working out?

Do you think I can strap my kayak (old perception brand) to the Cessna 150? lol

I would think ratchet straps would be the first choice over rope in a lot of applications. Rhyppa: did you use the kayaks to fish out of? I am agonizing over a Pakboat, but they seem to get mixed reviews.

Steve,

I am not familiar with the Canadian regulations regarding external loads. Carriage of external loads in the US is virtually prohibited, with the exception of Alaska, and a few VERY limited geographic regions of the lower 48.

I have used the PakBoats extensively, and I would not hesitate to recommend them highly. At one point, the outfit I worked for had ~20 of them, and all our field crews used them regularly, day in and day out all summer, including a LOT of portaging, as in dragging them through the woods. We rarely had problems, and virtually all the problems were related to someone getting a boat hung up on a branch, etc, and yanking really hard, bending one of the metal "ribs". Put in a new rib, and you're back in business.

I know a fellow who is a pretty serious whitewater canoeist, and he uses a 15 foot PakBoat almost exclusively now for white water stuff.

They are great boats.

Frankly, if you are in the lower 48 AND are concerned about staying legal, don't even consider carrying a boat on the outside of your airplane.

Again, there are a couple of very small regions where some of this is done in the Lower 48, but....

Finally, someone will say "You're full of it--I saw so and so in an airplane carrying canoes/kayaks, and the FAA was all over it and had no problem with it".

The answer there is likely that the aircraft was either a deHavilland DHC-2 Beaver or DHC 3 Otter. Both of those airplanes have external loads specified in their TCDS, so they can carry CERTAIN loads externally with no further ado.

And yes, I prefer ratchet straps to rope, but either will work fine. I've carried hundreds of external loads when I worked in Alaska, though I'd always opt to carry something inside the plane as opposed to outside.

MTV

mtv wrote: Carriage of external loads in the US is virtually prohibited, with the exception of Alaska, and a few VERY limited geographic regions of the lower 48.

IMTV

So Mike, what areas of the lower 48 would it be legal to carry a load like this? I don't mean to put you on the spot, I'm just curious as to the exceptions.

The snowshoes appear to be held to the struts with bungees.



In this case the back of the Cub was full of a set of wing covers, cowl blanket, sleeping bag, pre-heater, etc. with no room for snowshoes. The Cub is on skis and the destination requires snowshoes with 4' or more of snow on the ground.

The pilot also has a copy of the April 2004 letter from the FAA to a resident of Billings stating the regulation against external loads is too prohibitive.

Helix,

What you have illustrated in that photo would be considered, by a LOT of FAA inspectors as an "external Load" by definition.

The letter you reference, signed by Mr. Ballough, is meaningless. He does not state in that letter that the regulation is too vague, what he does say is that the regulations actually permit external load operations. They do, in fact, at FAR Part 133, which is probably what he was referencing. That reg refers to HELICOPTER external loads, however. Note that in that letter, no reference is made to either helicopter or fixed wing, as I recall.

Anyway, everyone in the FAA knows that that letter is pretty meaningless.

You're not putting me on the spot at all, by the way. I am in the process of trying to work with the FAA at the national level to attempt to get at least a part of the Alaska Region policy on the carriage of external loads on fixed wing aircraft applied nationally. Whether this will actually happen or not, I have no idea.

We have a maintenance inspector in this part of the world who claims that radio telemetry antennas (which create a lot less drag than snowshoes) cannot be installed on an airplane without a field approval and without operating the airplane in the Restricted category.

Kiss your insurance goodbye.

As I noted, I've carried a LOT of external loads. I've flown around a LOT with snowshoes on the struts, per the Alaska Region policy.

I don't do it in Minnesota, however.

Apparently, the air behaves differently down here....

MTV

Good luck on the policy revision. That would make life much simpler for us. Why is it the wiser heads don't always prevail?

I've got a Cessna that belonged to a state agency at one time and it came with a restricted airworthiness certificate allowing an external homing antenna. The plane also has a normal category certificate. Doesn't seem like an external load to me. I know that some SAR organizations will mount 121.5 homing antennas on struts at times for a single search. The antenna and coax is duct taped to the struts.

So, snowshoes on the struts would not be legal in the lower 48 anywhere?

Hey MTV,

Don't know if you looked lately but that "guide to external load operations" or whatever it was called has been removed from the alaska.faa.gov website in the past year. Do you still have a copy of it?

Yep, I do. PM me an email address, and I'll forward a copy.

Wonder what's up with that? One of the authors of that policy is now AFS 800 by the way.

MTV

This thread begs an age old question...

If a pilot lashes on and carries an external load in the backcountry and no one else witnesses it, was the load ever carried?

Jus sayin...