Where have you been? What have you seen?
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By Neil MacG
#452250
I firstly have to thank Steve H for his posting a trip report earlier in the year on his Blog site that he mentioned on this forum.

Before Steve posted the link to his report, I had already booked a similar holiday with my wife to Canada.

Our first week was spent at a ranch north of Calgary where we were trail riding as well as visiting the local areas including Banff, Lake Louise and the local rodeo at Caroline. One of the "wranglers" at the ranch is a Pilatus PC12 commercial pilot operating out of Florida when he isn't riding horses.

Dave otherwise known as "pappy" - the owner of Fort Langley Air Limited, was as Steve mentioned, a very helpful man who was quite happy to accomodate my desire to experience at first hand the skills needed to pilot a floatplane.

John, the FI who assisted me was a very patient, friendly and informative pilot who guided me expertly through the basic floatplane exercises in a Cessna 180 (looks as though it was the same one as in Steve's training session) on the Fraser River to the east of Vancouver.

I undertook a number of touch and goes and felt surprisingly at home in this element. There were 2 main reasons why I found it relatively easy (apart from the perfect weather conditions!). Firstly you fly using rudders, turning the yoke twists the aircraft onto it's side but not a lot else happens if that's all you do, only by leading the aircraft in and out of the turn using significant rudder input will you experience what can be regarded as a co-ordinated turn. This is something I've become very familiar with when flying the Auster so it seemed quite natural to me. The other aspect is the attitude when on or nearing the water. There is a pronounced tail down attitude that is needed for much of the time, particularly on the approach. A horizontal attitude in the flare is pretty bad news and you definitely don't want the floats to be horizontal on touchdown with a risk of nosing down nd getting exceedingly went and unpopular if you get it wrong. Again the Auster tailwheel experience helped with the attitude for a three pointer landing being similar to that required for the floatplane. Although we didn't experience any glassy water conditions, most of the time I was asked to land as close as possible to the bank in order to use the trees and bushes as a height guide - something that is absolutely essential in glassy conditions.

We followed the Fraser River, initially pointing towards Mount Baker (on the US side) and then flew over the steep valleyed approach to Harrison Lake. Because of excessive waves on the lake we didn't land, but circled one of the islands before departing to the side of the lake and curving round to rejoin the Fraser River. I was asked if I wanted to fly UNDER the wires that I had previously flown over when entering Harrison Lake - they are at around 800ft AGL, but with my wife clearly feeling a bit on the green side in the back I reluctantly declined.

I then undertook a series of T & Gs en route back to the base, having particular regard to the bow waves generated by other river craft. One landing was aborted to avoid hitting a bow wave and I maintained about 20ft above the surface for about half a mile in order to put her down in a more safe river state.

The one bit where I had a real challenge was when we got near to the base we turned back up river towards the jetty. At this point my FI got out of his seat, climbed out side and onto the RH float. He then got me to change seats and try and judge the correct river approach to the dock taking account of the river current as well as the wind. In practice I would have had to undertake the same exchange of seats with engine running if I were to tie up successfully. The last part of the docking process you need to be ready to jump from the floats to the dock to tie her up without damaging the aircraft or getting a dunking!

Most excellent fun. :D :D :D

My pics are here

Neil
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By Neil MacG
#452328
Apologies to anyone trying to access my website at the moment as the Dynamic DNS system doesn't seem to be updating properly (a problem with dyndns.org rather than my server)

Temporarily the site can be accessed here:

Neil
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By Roy
#452660
Neil - Fantastic trip! I did a similar trip a few years back, the only Float Plane flying was a trip round Vancouver in a DH Beaver, the Donkey went quiet about half way through the flight as the muppet Pilot had failed to switch tanks :shock: haven't managed to get the wife in a GA aircraft since :cry:
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By Steve H
#455209
Neil

Glad you enjoyed it. With your Auster experience, you would have had quite a head start over yer average spam-can pilot (like myself) who has got used to thinking those things on the floor are only needed on the take-off run :lol:

Sounds like you had the same instructor as me - was John a hugely tall guy? Oh, and s*d the wife, I would have gone under!

Sounds like you had a great time and of course a great time of year to visit that part of the country. It is excellent fun flying floats isn't it?