Love the Lake Amphib. Shortly after acquiring my PPL, I bought a LA4-200 from Lake Central Air Services in Muskoka, Ontario. I completed the factory training course with some very experienced Lake pilots who put me through all of the paces, and I then spent the first summer flying it across Canada, covering the vast Northlands from Goose Bay, Labrador to Tuktoyaktuk, NWT. One of the best experiences of my life, and fantastic way to learn about backcountry and bush flying.

Several years, many adventures, and 529h logbook hours later, I sold FHNT and bought a Mooney Ovation because my mission had changed from 'get there fun' to 'get there fast', but I still look back on my time in the Lake as a big part of my 'how i became a pilot' story. No other airplane--even the Cessna 185 that I now fly--required as much attention or demanded as much proficiency.

There is no doubt that Lakes aren't for everyone, and they have a very specific mission profile and more than enough quirks. This makes them personal aircraft, rather than working bush planes, but there's very few places that you can't go with a Lake, and you'll rarely have more fun getting there.

Wonderful niche aircraft. My Dad and I owned two of these wonderful little amphibs back in the early 80's, a '58 Colonial Skimmer C-2, (predecessor to the Lake) and a '74 Buccaneer. We went through the factory training course with the Rivards in Kissimmee, trained mostly with John Staber, a legend in the Skimmer/Lake world. I went on to instruct in both the Skimmer and Lake. IMO, anyone bad mouthing the water handling of this series is not properly trained. I now teach mostly in our 180HP PA-18A, also a wonderful platform, however, there are things about the Lake I do miss, (not worrying about being blown over in high winds for one). There is no perfect solution. Like most "different" birds, the Lake/Skimmer requires quality instruction from a truly experienced instructor. TR

I took care of a couple of Lake 200's when I had my shops In NW WA. They're actually pretty tough little airplanes, from the maintenance side of things. The one was owned by an older couple "Dot and Ern", a wonderful couple of people, and they flew the wings off that thing!!! She did the flying and they had an absolute ball with it!! It was gear up landed at least once and saw so many little lakes and rivers and even a few rocks, and yet just kept on going!! The other one wasn't used quite as much, but it sure did everything he asked of it. They're a bit of a pain to work on but not terrible. All in all, I liked them.
John

hardtailjohn wrote: I took care of a couple of Lake 200's when I had my shops In NW WA. ...

Curious where your shop(s) were, and when that was.

Bellingham, for Cascade Flight....1987 and was there for a few years. Then up in Blaine a little while later for a while. Then I ran a shop for Tron-air on the backside of Bayview for a couple years.

JH

+1 for Lakes

I was shopping Amphib Skywagons in the 2015-2017 time frame. They were untouchable with my budget. I initially dismissed Lakes because of the bad-rep \ urban legend stories you hear. I suppose they earned said reputation when they had their brief time as the "in-plane" and were purchased by folks that had big pockets but little to no flying experience.

My Bucky has 980lb useful load. It does everything I want it to do in a fun fashion. I've flown it to the east coast from the PNW twice. It suits me well.

The only compromise is docking. With that said, we don't have very many (hardy any) seaplane docks here in the PNW anyways.

I'm happy with it.

ZPilot wrote:+1 for Lakes

I was shopping Amphib Skywagons in the 2015-2017 time frame. They were untouchable with my budget. I initially dismissed Lakes because of the bad-rep \ urban legend stories you hear. I suppose they earned said reputation when they had their brief time as the "in-plane" and were purchased by folks that had big pockets but little to no flying experience.

My Bucky has 980lb useful load. It does everything I want it to do in a fun fashion. I've flown it to the east coast from the PNW twice. It suits me well.

The only compromise is docking. With that said, we don't have very many (hardy any) seaplane docks here in the PNW anyways.

I'm happy with it.

I think you're right. Like a lot of "novelties", it seemed like a lot of folks bought Lakes and promptly got wet operating them. The slightly different characteristics (seems like the high thrust line bit a lot of folks) should have been easy enough to adapt to, with just a little training.

At one point, you couldn't buy insurance for a Lake. Armand Rivard, along with others, developed a training syllabus for the plane, which significantly reduced accidents, and with that training, an owner could get insured.

I've only flown them a couple times, but was really impressed with their performance and capabilities.

And, I never liked docks either.....

MTV