Well I'm putting the wheels on today and figured I'd post a few pics as I'm doing it.

Its too cold to go outside today...

Good looking airplane with a unique paint job. What lake do you park on?

Nice! We got ours off a few weeks ago, and we don't have snow yet!
What prop are you using ? 403 84 inch?

Nice! Some 206 kin. Sadly I just make the transition from money to noise. Look forward to more pics. Lovin both of your beautiful airplanes. Brett

It's now been nine seasons since I went through that drill......after thirty seasons of changing from floats to wheels each fall. That was converting at least one airplane to wheels and most years converting two or three.

That transition was always a sort of mixed bag of emotions for me. The end of a float season always brought on a bit of melancholy.....another summer ending, the thought of winter around the corner, and all that meant, living in the great white north. Breaking down and hauling out the camps I'd been supporting all summer, bidding those hard working seasonal employees I'd been working with farewell, all seemed a little depressing.

On the other hand, those last few flights often involved removing wing covers on a frosty morning (not a fun chore on a seaplane) and busting some thin ice with those precious floats......a gut wrenching sound if there ever was one, though it rarely did any damage at all. Then of course, at the end of those days, the chore of installing the wing covers to permit a before noon departure the next day further taxed one's love affair with float flying.

But, then I'd climb in one of those recently "re-geared" airplanes, open the throttle and be reminded of the difference in performance of those airplanes when unencumbered by those big canoes.....Oh, and flying without hip boots!!!!! It seems like I almost forgot each summer what it's like to climb in an airplane wearing "normal" foot gear.

And then realizing once more that those beautiful gravel bars on the numerous rivers in the area were once again available as landing sites, with no current to deal with as I parked the plane, or departed. Then I'd be reminded that soon there would be enough snow and that one or two of those planes would make a further transition to skis would get the juices flowing once again and the float season quickly became a comfortable memory.

The good news was always that in May, when it came time to float those airplanes once more, I was always re-energized to get back on the water......and to exchange those bunny boots for hip boots once again.

One of the beauties of float flying is that winter can offer a break from it, allowing a bit of time to reflect on the past summer season, to make plans for the upcoming summer, and to get re-energized once more for another great float season.

Enjoy your winter break, gents......

MTV

Well it all went smoothly and was around a 4hr ordeal. Only issues I realized I had where when I was putting the 29's on. The new brakes had straight fittings and I need 45's to clear the wheel. So she's sitting on 8.50s till I make it to Glacier.





And everything that MTV just said is exactly the feelings of this season. Lucky/Unlucky? For me it's engine change time this winter and I'm not going to put it on skis this year which brings up a whole other string of emotions.

Nice expression of the same sentiments I experienced this Fall. I was sad to take the floats off, and left them until Oct 31, but excited to get back to practicing my tailwheel technique. This has been my first year on floats and with a taildragger.

The bottom pic is from last winter but thought it was fitting with the talk of wing covers...

I shoved the plane outside last night and didn't take a pic of it done.

PAMR MX when I'm home I park it on finger lake in the valley but that's a rarity in the summer. This past summer it was on Beluga lake in homer and summer before I had it in king salmon.

My185 is sitting in the hangar on floats, pickled, it will be there until the spring thaw. As much as I would like to have it on skis, in my case it is just not worth the hassle, I can fly the clubs plane on skis whenever I want and don't have the concern of having to dig my heavy sow out of the slush if things go south. Sunday we changed our flying club's PA12 over to skis. One of the club members brought a boom truck to lift the plane, it probably took a couple of hours to switch out the floats and change the prop. Now we just need some really cold weather with no snow to get some good ice on the lakes and we will be good to go.

Steve