Your tax dollars at work.

We have all joked about wasteful government spending. There is plenty. We all pay taxes and grimace when we give a huge percentage of our hard earned paychecks to the Federal government. Sometimes we forget that we really are the luckiest people on the planet. We live in a country where we have opportunities and freedoms unlike anywhere else in the world.

Every time I get into an aircraft and get to fly over this great land I try to appreciate the sacrifices of people that I will never know that allow us these freedoms.

At WaterWings I often have the privilege of training some of our military personnel in the art of seaplane flying. This is a particular thrill. I have trained students from Maxwell AFB, Columbus AFB, Fort Rucker and many other fine installations. I have had students who fly T-6s, Black Hawks, Comanches, Apaches, C-130s, C-17s, CH-47s, F-16s, F-18s, and this weekend I got to know an F22 pilot.

These pilots are always consummate professionals. I can show them how to perform a maneuver and they can do it as well or better than me in just a few tries. I get to hear stories about their training and some of their adventures, and I am humbled, amazed and honored to share seaplane flying with them. These are guys that are flying amazing equipment and have been trained by the best to be the best, and it shows. And we, at WaterWings, get to actually show them something new. They get great joy in driving my Cessna 150 with the ungainly pontoons around Lake Martin.

I get to fly my little airplane around the state of Alabama and beyond freely and without fear-- because these brave, highly skilled, highly trained aviators are equipped with truly extraordinary aircraft. All of this takes money, but more so it takes the dedication of our armed forces who are willing to put themselves in harm's way so that we can be as fortunate as we are.

Protecting the seaplane from insects

Dirt daubers and wasps are my biggest trouble makers.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_dauber

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasp




Both of these guys can crawl into remarkably small holes and build nests. Tbe dirt daubers are generally harmless except for two things. They look a lot like wasps, which to the uninitiated can cause screaming, and they build nests out of mud and clay. Dirt daubers have just a couple of yellow stripes while wasps will have many yellow stripes down their stingers.




There is an unlimited supply of clay around our lake and there is an almost unlimited number of holes for dirt daubers to sneak into your plane to make a nest. These nests are mostly just heavy, thus reducing your payload. Your best bet for protection is to put steel wool in any large openings and put screen over the smaller ones that you can get to. I do an annual purge of the nests after the spring nesting season.




Wasps make a more paper-like nest. These are light and don't really cause much of an issue, but the wasps themselves CAN cause havoc in the cockpit. Many people have severe or even fatal reactions to a wasp sting, so these guys are not to be trifled with. Prevention using the same method as dealing with dirt daubers is your best bet, and if you get a wasp loose in the cockpit, don't panic, just let your training step in and FLY THE PLANE.

Protecting the seaplane from the Alabama sun

The Alabama sun can be brutal. We have temperatures into the 100s sometimes for days from July through September. It is not a dry heat like Phoenix. This is a wet and sticky heat. Our plexiglass windows deteriorate in the sun. The UV rays break down the polymers and make the glass cloudy and eventually the plastic will craze and look almost shattered.




Our avionics and our bodies don't care much for heat either. UV rays also attack our upholstery and interior plastics. I use a cabin cover which I bought from Bruce's Custom Covers at http://www.aircraftcovers.com.%20these/ are very durable and easy to put on and take off. I have tried other brands which can be cheaper, but they were not as sturdy and they fell apart after just a few years.




The covers protect all of the glass in the plane as well as reducing the internal temperatures. I suspect it even helps prevent hail damage to the windows by providing a barrier. I have one of these covers for the Twin Comanche as well ,and when I have to park the plane outside for even a few hours, I install the cover to keep the plane from getting too hot during the warm months. I still wish for a hangar, but at $350-$400 vs $50,000 for a hangar, as well as easy on and off, the cover just has too many plusses.

Snakes on a Seaplane

I was flying the seaplane today on Yates lake just below Lake Martin Dam. I often go here when the main lake is more busy than I would prefer. There are only a few houses on the lake and very few boats. It is about 10 miles long and 1500 feet wide for most of its body. It is an awesome seaplane lake with often perfectly glassy water since it is down in a canyon of sorts. Today my student and I were idling around in the middle of the lake just appreciating mother nature's grandure when my student noticed something moving pretty fast in the water. It looked like a large snake swiming across the lake. We taxied over to investigate, and sure enough it was a snake about four feet long . It was apparently as interested in the seaplane as we were in it. As we taxied by, it climbed up onto the back of the right float. It did not look happy, but then again, what makes a snake look happy? It stared at me as I peered through my open window and kind of rared back like it wanted to strike. I was too far away and inside the plane, which was where I intended to stay. I was concerned that it might find a more secure perch on the plane or maybe even gain access to the cockpit, but this was unlikely. I was not about to get out. I am sure that the weight and balance was not good with a ten pound snake that far back on the float. We gunned the plane a bit and it decided to depart the float. Now I was mad at myself for not snapping a picture with my iPhone.

Rejuvenation - Geometry

We had been very careful to leave the float attachment gear on the plane and not to touch the flying wires that keep everything in line, but as the time came to paint the floats and all of this gear, we decided to remove it and thus do a better job painting these parts. So we built a rig to raise the plane from the lifting rigs on top. These rings are good for lifting straight up, but it is not good to put a side load on them, so we used a 6x6 piece of lumber and ran eye bolts through them. We then attached chain via shackles to the eye bolts and we lifted the plane using a chain hoist that we purchases for about $90 from Harbour Frieght. The chain hoist worked really well since it is a gentle and controlable lift. The chain will scratch or remove paint if you are not careful with it. We raised the plane gently supporting the tail with another human. Once the plane was up it was pretty stable. We then unbolted the attachment gear. This is another on of those things that is really strong as long as everything is attached and tight, but it turnned into a pile of spaggetti when off the plane. It is important to keep track of which parts go where and to remove as few parts as possible. Once some of the tubes were off I was able to really clean out some "years old" dirt dauber nests from inside the tubes. More useful load for me.... We reversed the process once everything was painted. We installthed the attachment gear to the floats first while they were on the trailer. We rolled the trailer under the raised airplane and lined everything up as best we could and lowered the plane to the gear. It took several hours to get everything attached, but not tight. The tightening would wait until we got the geometry straight. It would not do to have the floats improperly aligned with the plane or each other. All these things are possible with the miriad of possible adjustments. We found points on each wing as a reference and tightened this and loosened that until everything came into alignment. This was not nearly as bad a process as I imagined. We did a great job, because the first landing was very comfortable.

Rejuvenation -- Stripping the plane

The first step in an aircraft paint job is to prepare the surface for paint. This means stripping. Paint adds many pounds to an aircraft and the best paint jobs start with a good prep. I have heard of people painting over the old paint but this is generally a bad idea. Paint sticks best to a primer coat and a primer coat sticks best to a clean metal surface.



There are several chemical methods to strip paint and these are the most commonly used. The other option is sanding, but that is hard work and hard on the airplane. We were looking for a quick and environmentally clean method. We chose to strip the plane using Soda Blasting. http://www.ibssodablasting.com/ This is kind of like sand blasting but using much more delicate baking soda. The process took two days and cost a little over $3,000. I felt that this was expensive, but it was fast, effective, and environmentally safe. The surface of the blasted plane was very nice for paint application. Once the blasting was done we went over the entire airframe and floats to look for damage that needs to be repaired. Can you feel the pain of my wallet?