The Drive from Victoria Harbor to Sidney gives me time to mentally think through what I'd done the day before. Awesomeness was the overwhelming feeling. Time for a large coffee and some eggs on pancakes and back to meet John at the club.
The old Ford truck we use to drive from the club to the seaplane base is definitely vintage. It's huge, built for comfort not speed and includes a fuel tank in the back.
Today we do two sorties. The first we cover (once again according to my logbook): Slow flight, stalls, turns, glassy water take-offs and landings. We depart out again to the North West, turn West toward Cowichan Bay and head up the valley over the Cowichan River. Slow flight, stalls and turns are done at a safe altitude of 1000-2000 feet.
I've never flown a Cessna before - yes one of the few - so I have nothing to compare it to in terms of slow flight and stall characteristics. It felt quite docile and predictable which is a good thing. This part of the training is to familiarize oneself with what it feels like flying slow, usually when you are landing or taking off, and to avoid any inadvertent stalls, and how to recover if you do happen to stall. Ok, so with that part done, we head toward Quamicham Lake for more circuits.
The lack of wind gives me the opportunity to try my first glassy water landing. What's very interesting about glass landings is as you get closer to the water, it becomes almost impossible to judge your height above it. With no discernible texture, ones usually reliance upon depth perception and peripheral vision to start a flare don't exist. The flare is the act of the pilot to level off just before landing, and let the aircraft gently ease back to earth - or water. Usually the pilot flares when he judges the height above the ground using visual reconning. If you descend at the usual 500 feet per minute and not flare (because you can't actually figure out when to flare) you would hit too hard and maybe even dig in the front of the floats and flip over. I'm sure all you non-pilots have experienced the odd hard landing on a commercial flight. Imagine that, but hitting with the floats angled forward. Not good. Here's a recent example of a float plane crash.
The setup for a glass water landing is, at about 200-300 feet above the water, start a very gentle descent of about 100-200 feet per minute. For those of us that have instrument flying experience it's pretty straight forward - almost like coming on an imaginary very low angle glide slope - and therefore you need a fairly long distance of water to do this safely. If your lake is small, that's a problem. John gives me one of his pro tips by suggesting I approach over a creek bed where there is a break in the trees so I come over the lake's edge at the lowest possible altitude. My first glass water landing was an amazing experience. I actually got a shock when we hit the water, I had no idea what height I was as we got closer. Bang. We landed! That was super cool. Another tip for making it easier is stay close to shore and try to gauge depth that way. Another is look for a boat wake to land on. Not too big of a wake mind you, that would cause other issues!
After a few more take-offs and landings it's time to attempt my first docking. With the main pilot seat on the left side, it's important to learn how to dock against the left side of the aircraft, to prepare for solo docking. To dock you need to approach at the slowest possible taxi speed, take off your seat belt and open the door, point the nose at about a 45 degree angle to the dock, then about 3 or 4 plane lengths from the dock, cut the power and just drift in. As we approach the dock, I kicked in the right rudder to swing the aircraft parallel to the dock. Sounds easy right? By now the wind had pick up a bit so that was another factor to consider. With some help from John and appropriate aerleon inputs I was able to nail it. Yes!
In all my excitement, as I opened the door, I bumped my iPhone 6+ that was in my left side pocket. It flew out of my pocket, hit the left side float, bounced up in the air, enticingly close but just out of reach and then, plop! Straight into lake Lake Quamicham. It quickly disappeared out of site into the green algae just beneath the surface. I consoled myself in the fact that I had just successfully docked a seaplane and it was just a phone. But it did teach me a valuable lesson. When in and around seaplanes, make sure everything is tight and secure, pocked zipped and Velcro closed.
I jumped out onto the left float, then onto the dock, and held the wing as John deplaned. We hitched up to the dock with the small ropes that are permanently attached to the float and has a quick walk around and stretch. The peaceful lake, the grassy paddock complete with the owners own floatplane, was such a sight. I was beginning to understand the attraction of this kind of flying. Usually when one regular land plane back at an airport, it's immediately back to civilization, back to the real world. This was a different feeling. This was like the adventure continues on. It was a bit the same when I did my tail dragged flying in the foothills of the Sierrra Nevada in Northern California. You could land on a grass strip and literally camp for the night under your wing. Brilliant!
There were the sounds of the wind against the tress, a few birds chirping. A small water ferret of some description ran along the dock and jumped in the water. Was he going to look for my phone I wondered? Back in the air we headed back to Victoria International for some lunch.
On sortie 2 we covered: Sea landings and more glass water landings. This time we asked for a clearance across the Island to the East side. We initially headed South, then we did a left turn across the peninsula to Cordova Bay. This was open seawater. I did a few seawater landings and was able to experience the sensation familiar to boaties of feeling the swells move underneath and the troughs and peaks lowere and raise the aircraft. Amazing again and a bit disconcerting at first. It was a very slight swell and not cause for any landing or take-off difficultly but John relayed some of his stories to me of how when the swells get bigger one can time a take-off by launching off a peak. One to try another time.
We flew further North and through the passage between Maine Island and Galiano Island. It's an active ferry route for the ferries to and from Vancouver. So you must avoid flying too low. These are not your average garden variety ferries, they are rather large.
Back to base, debrief and end of day two. Back to Victoria Harbor and a stroll around its picturesque waterside streets and a meal and it was time to sleep one more time before day 3 and hopefully the solo flight.
Click here to read about day 3 training.
Today we do two sorties. The first we cover (once again according to my logbook): Slow flight, stalls, turns, glassy water take-offs and landings. We depart out again to the North West, turn West toward Cowichan Bay and head up the valley over the Cowichan River. Slow flight, stalls and turns are done at a safe altitude of 1000-2000 feet.
I've never flown a Cessna before - yes one of the few - so I have nothing to compare it to in terms of slow flight and stall characteristics. It felt quite docile and predictable which is a good thing. This part of the training is to familiarize oneself with what it feels like flying slow, usually when you are landing or taking off, and to avoid any inadvertent stalls, and how to recover if you do happen to stall. Ok, so with that part done, we head toward Quamicham Lake for more circuits.
The lack of wind gives me the opportunity to try my first glassy water landing. What's very interesting about glass landings is as you get closer to the water, it becomes almost impossible to judge your height above it. With no discernible texture, ones usually reliance upon depth perception and peripheral vision to start a flare don't exist. The flare is the act of the pilot to level off just before landing, and let the aircraft gently ease back to earth - or water. Usually the pilot flares when he judges the height above the ground using visual reconning. If you descend at the usual 500 feet per minute and not flare (because you can't actually figure out when to flare) you would hit too hard and maybe even dig in the front of the floats and flip over. I'm sure all you non-pilots have experienced the odd hard landing on a commercial flight. Imagine that, but hitting with the floats angled forward. Not good. Here's a recent example of a float plane crash.
The setup for a glass water landing is, at about 200-300 feet above the water, start a very gentle descent of about 100-200 feet per minute. For those of us that have instrument flying experience it's pretty straight forward - almost like coming on an imaginary very low angle glide slope - and therefore you need a fairly long distance of water to do this safely. If your lake is small, that's a problem. John gives me one of his pro tips by suggesting I approach over a creek bed where there is a break in the trees so I come over the lake's edge at the lowest possible altitude. My first glass water landing was an amazing experience. I actually got a shock when we hit the water, I had no idea what height I was as we got closer. Bang. We landed! That was super cool. Another tip for making it easier is stay close to shore and try to gauge depth that way. Another is look for a boat wake to land on. Not too big of a wake mind you, that would cause other issues!
After a few more take-offs and landings it's time to attempt my first docking. With the main pilot seat on the left side, it's important to learn how to dock against the left side of the aircraft, to prepare for solo docking. To dock you need to approach at the slowest possible taxi speed, take off your seat belt and open the door, point the nose at about a 45 degree angle to the dock, then about 3 or 4 plane lengths from the dock, cut the power and just drift in. As we approach the dock, I kicked in the right rudder to swing the aircraft parallel to the dock. Sounds easy right? By now the wind had pick up a bit so that was another factor to consider. With some help from John and appropriate aerleon inputs I was able to nail it. Yes!
In all my excitement, as I opened the door, I bumped my iPhone 6+ that was in my left side pocket. It flew out of my pocket, hit the left side float, bounced up in the air, enticingly close but just out of reach and then, plop! Straight into lake Lake Quamicham. It quickly disappeared out of site into the green algae just beneath the surface. I consoled myself in the fact that I had just successfully docked a seaplane and it was just a phone. But it did teach me a valuable lesson. When in and around seaplanes, make sure everything is tight and secure, pocked zipped and Velcro closed.
I jumped out onto the left float, then onto the dock, and held the wing as John deplaned. We hitched up to the dock with the small ropes that are permanently attached to the float and has a quick walk around and stretch. The peaceful lake, the grassy paddock complete with the owners own floatplane, was such a sight. I was beginning to understand the attraction of this kind of flying. Usually when one regular land plane back at an airport, it's immediately back to civilization, back to the real world. This was a different feeling. This was like the adventure continues on. It was a bit the same when I did my tail dragged flying in the foothills of the Sierrra Nevada in Northern California. You could land on a grass strip and literally camp for the night under your wing. Brilliant!
There were the sounds of the wind against the tress, a few birds chirping. A small water ferret of some description ran along the dock and jumped in the water. Was he going to look for my phone I wondered? Back in the air we headed back to Victoria International for some lunch.
We flew further North and through the passage between Maine Island and Galiano Island. It's an active ferry route for the ferries to and from Vancouver. So you must avoid flying too low. These are not your average garden variety ferries, they are rather large.
Back to base, debrief and end of day two. Back to Victoria Harbor and a stroll around its picturesque waterside streets and a meal and it was time to sleep one more time before day 3 and hopefully the solo flight.
Click here to read about day 3 training.
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