seaplane training: day 1

Today I took the adventerous trip to Winter Haven Florida. About a two hour drive from Vero beach, Winter Haven is located in central Florida. Located right next to the Winter Haven airfield, is Jack Brown's Seaplane Base. Here they operate a small seaplane flight school. The claim to have trained the most seaplane pilots in the world.

Leaving early this morning, we arrived around 8:30 am. After filling out some paperwork, we started with some ground instruction. They provided us with a packet of general information about the airplane, and seaplane operations. After about an hour discussion, we headed out to the aircraft.

We were given a guided walk-around of the airplane. What to look for in pre flight inspections, and more information about the plane itself. Once we completed the pre flight inspections, we were ready to hit the skies.

We climbed in, and started to taxi out onto the middle of the lake. After getting the basics of taxi, and the different methods used, we lined up for take off. Take is fairly straightforward in the Cub. Full aft stick, untill you get up on the floats. You release a little of the pressure, but hold most, untill the plane climbs off the water. You don't really 'rotate', as much as, you let the plane fly by itself.

Once we got up to altitude, we started with some basic Private pilot maneuvers. Steep turns and stalls was all we attemted today. We then started in with some touch and goes.

Landing the seaplane is fairly simple. There aren't a lot of checklists to worry about, or power settings that are complicated. Everything about this airplane is very simple. The plane flies extrememly well, but requires a lot of attention to wind correction. Due to it being extremely light, it is affected heavily by wind.



It was fun to fly around low all day, and land on some different lakes.

Tomorrow we return again, early in the morning. Tomorrow we have another lesson to finish up on some more items. Then if all is well, we have the checkride. We're hoping the weather stays nice enough for us to finish tomorrow. I should have more pictures from today, as well as from tomorrow.

Untill then…