Seaplane Take 2

In my obsessive-compulsive style I came home from my first seaplane ride and started researching about similar designs and came upon the Sea Rey. It is very close to the Aventura II in many ways but has been around longer and is more refined. Also there are about 350 of them flying vs. about 150 Aventura II's. Another 150 or so kits have been sold so are assumedly in some stage of building. It is a bit surprising but when comparing apples and apples with similarly equipped airplanes, the cost of the two types is very close.

The refinements are in areas like real Stits fabric covering on the wings and tail feathers instead of pre-sewn sock-type coverings. The ailerons are controlled by torque tubes instead of Teleflex push-pull cables and they are balanced with counterweights. It just looks and feels and flies more like a real airplane and less like an ultralight. The low speed end of the performance envelope is virtually identical but the cleaner wing gives the Sea Rey an advantage of about 10 -15 mph on the top end. In an airplane this slow, that is a pretty substantial percentage. On the negative side, the covering process takes a couple of hundred hours vs. about 25 for the Aventura. The cockpit is a bit smaller but still an inch wider than a Cessna 172 and very comfortable. You lay back more in the seats.

A very nice advantage is that the Sea Rey has standard split canopy doors that slide open or shut even in flight vs. the Aventura's doors that must be either closed or removed prior to flight because they swing forward. I read one story of a Sea Rey adventure where a cabin cruiser went by in front of the plane on the water making a very large wake. They saw it coming and simply slid the doors closed before the wake came up over the bow and over the canopy like they were going through a car wash. An Aventura pilot with the doors off would have gotten soaked. So, there's a lot of little things to consider in airplane design.

Okay, so I noticed that Progressive Aerodyne, the manufacturer of the Sea Rey, happens to be right here in Orlando. I just had to take advantage of my good fortune of being right in the same city so I got up this morning, called over there and arranged for a tour. I met Kerry Richter who showed me around and told me lots of interesting things about the kits and the airplanes. There were several of them available to look at. Then he asked if I'd like to go fly! Would I ?!!! So off we went to the airstrip where yet two more Sea Reys sat in a hanger. There are about a half dozen others based at that strip. There are a whole bunch of these things based around Orlando! There is one on Dave Nixon's lake but until this week I didn't know what it was. We later stopped by the Apopka airport where Progressive Aerodyne plans to move by the end of the year, and went inside a large hanger to see three or four more! I lost count! That's a very good indicator that this is a good airplane.

We taxied out and I asked something about the decision to go with a tapered wing, which happens to be beautiful, especially when one gets a view of the planform of the airplane, such as when it's in a steep bank. Kerry phrased his answer in terms of “I thought that less mass at the tips would be better and visibility would be better...” etc., and I realized that I was sitting next to the designer of the plane! I hadn't put that together. He has about 6,000 hours, about 5,500 of which were in seaplanes and about 3,500 of which were in Sea Reys! This man really knows his airplane and has been working steadily at tweaking and improving it for years.

We took off and being as we were in Florida, there was a lake, a few ponds, and a canal very handily nearby. Kerry did a dramatic military-style banking approach and set her down on a smooth pond. Wow! I experienced that smooth water rush! Yeow!!! He demonstrated high speed step taxiing and some tight turns that would have flipped any conventional plane on floats. He took us over to a little canal and landed on it. It was a place that would be pretty much impossible to get to any other way except maybe by airboat. It was a tiny little strip of water. I was thinking as we settled into it how alien it would feel to be anywhere near it in any normal plane with wheels or any larger float plane or seaplane for that matter. But the little Sea Rey is like a magic carpet. It can go just about anywhere.

Then we popped over to Lake Apopka which was also very smooth this morning. He gave me the airplane and completely hands-off talked me through a landing. It was so easy and I greased the first one on with no problem at all. The second was a little sloppier but I did about a half dozen in a row. I just took off, climbed to fifty feet or so and then made another landing again and again across the lake. What a blast! We saw alligators all over the place. Around one bend there must have been about thirty of them all having a gator convention. Possibly it was a homeowners association meeting.

I got to fly it around a bit more and then drop the wheels, make a conventional traffic pattern behind a Cessna, and then land on the paved strip. I couldn't believe how I could just fly the thing. It is so stable and easy. Just a delightful little bird that delivers an absolutely fantastic combination of air and water sport all at the same time. The flying part makes it more fun than any boat and the boat part makes it more fun than other planes. There is just nothing like water flying. And this beautiful little plane delivers an awesome experience for the buck. I'm a big believer in the aesthetic tenet that form follows function and the Sea Rey gives an amazing breadth of functionality along with generous doses of visual poetry. I'm in love!

50 + 1 day

Unbelievable! I just saw a promo ad on TV for a Woodstock retrospective show. The sponsor is AARP! I am not making this up! A blurb from one interview: "...we were popping acid. Today I'm popping antacid."

Pro!

On my 50^th birthday yesterday I was able to accomplish two goals I've had for myself for a number of years. The first was to experience flying a seaplane. The other milestone was that I can now claim in the denotative (if not connotative) sense of the word to be a professional musician! The denotative sense being that someone is willing to pay me money to play. I finished my premier 3-night run at the Enigma restaurant in Satellite Beach, Florida and walked away with a check twice as large as the best I had hoped for. Not quite up to my best day rate for camera work but not too far behind! And better than some of the cheapie camera jobs I've taken this last year. I also left with the proprietor's invitation to come back and play whenever my schedule allows. Pretty cool. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to do it, but I plan to go back.

Almost all of my experience playing in public before had been in church. I'd often thought about how different playing in church is from professional performing even without regard to content or musical styles. In church the audience stays more or less the same and one plays different music every week, often with barely adequate rehearsal and sometimes less. In most other performance environments, the musician plays more or less the same repertoire and the audience changes. I always thought I'd like to have a go at the latter mode and see what it's like to be able to get far beyond executing the song to the point of concentrating mostly on emoting and connecting with the audience. I've seen a good many church musicians who can do it all in a church context, but I've never been good enough to get it all together to the fine edge I'm talking about in just one rehearsal. So far it's been a really enjoyable experience. And a paycheck ain't at all bad either. Maybe you can teach an old dog some new tricks after all.

50

The big five-oh has finally hit me. I feel fine but it does make one pause to wonder where all the years could possibly have gone. But everyone knows all this so I'll speak of something more interesting. This morning I had a little time and went out to a small airstrip I had passed every time I went out to the condo. I love little airports so I just wanted to go nose around a bit. As it happens it is the home office/factory/test facility for Aero Adventure aircraft, makers of several kit airplanes the featured one of which is the Aventura II. It is a strut-braced, two seat Kevlar hull seaplane. The guys there welcomed me warmly and showed me all around and told me all about the airplane. There is an instructor on-site there, an ex-career air force, airline, has-flown-everything old salt. His name is Bob and he's a really nice fellow. They give demonstration flights for a certain sum of dollars the mention of which brought my normal knee-jerk response of “I can't afford it.” Then I got to thinking, “Hey, it's my birthday!” With that I decided I needed to supply myself with a birthday present. So out went Bob and I to the demonstration airplane. After a bit of briefing on the simple systems, we fired up the 100hp Rotax 912ULS engine and did the customary checks. A short dash of about 150 feet down the pavement was followed by quick levitation. It doesn't take much room to get this thing into the air. It's a nice, roomy airplane with great visibility. Very easy to fly. Even with no doors it was considerably quieter than I was expecting. A few minutes flying got us over to a little lake and then the real fun began. I have all my life wanted to experience water flying and this morning I finally got my first taste. The wind was up a bit and the water was getting choppy. Bob said the look of the water told him we had at least 15 knots wind. That was not making him happy as this thing is absolutely the best toy on the planet on smooth water. But he was game and we made a couple of landings. I didn't think it was too rough. It's really something to be flying along in a plane one second and then motoring along in a boat the next. I can see how it could become quite the addiction. Back in the air I tried some different maneuvers to get a feel for the ship and then made the approach and landing back at the strip. There was a pretty good crosswind but I managed. Bob seemed to be impressed that I did so well after so many years out of the saddle. Guess it was all those “wasted” nights on the X-Plane simulator. I won't go into a big pilot report here as that is available elsewhere if you are really interested in this airplane. But I must say I was impressed by a lot of what this design has to offer. So here we go again, another kit airplane on my short list of candidates. And I do believe that was the best birthday present I ever bought myself.

The one I flew is the red, white, and blue one in this shot.

Letting Go

It seems that on numerous fronts, in the immediate past and even more immediate present, I have been learning about letting go. It must be a very important lesson because it seems God keeps hammering and hammering on it with me. It can be an unhappy lesson to experience, to be sure. But then, it has other facets. I had all but given up on trying to find a guitar playing gig at a restaurant and certainly had lost all momentum in that direction. Then over this last weekend an opportunity just dropped into my lap. The owner of a new and so far seemingly successful restaurant down at the beach had by chance heard me play at a party many months ago and wants me to come perform. I start a three night run tonight, 6:00 - 10:00pm. We'll see how it goes. I'm looking forward to really enjoying this. If you happen to be in the environs of Satellite Beach, Florida the next three nights, It's called the "Enigma," right on A1A. (note: The restaurant is actually an upgrade of sorts. The proprietors had a smaller place called the "Enigma Cafe" for six years that was in the same area. They closed that down about a year ago to develop the new place.)

Happy Ending Internship

I finally made it out to see Steve Saint at I-TEC yesterday. As it happened it was the last day for an intern from LeTourneau University who had been there all summer working on a system that modifies an aircraft. That's all I will say in the way of description because it looks like a patent will be sought for it. They were going to try flying the latest version after numerous modifications and since I was standing there Steve asked me to grab their video camera and document it in keeping with the I-TEC “five minute rule” (If you are standing around there for more than five minutes, you get put to work!)

The mission almost got scrubbed because of some wind conditions. But then they decided to push ahead and I ended up shooting the first flights of an extremely successful prototype. The wind ended up helping to prove the value of the system. My convertible got pressed into duty to do some running alongside shots utilizing a closed runway that was being used for the testing. It all just came together yesterday afternoon and everyone was elated that the goals for the project had been achieved.

It was all the more fun because the student, Jonathan, was able to be there for it on the last day before he had to leave to go back to school. And he got a ride in his invention with video of it to boot. This kid, a mechanical engineering student who was a sophomore last year, continued on the work this summer after being a part of a class that had worked on it for two semesters last year. His basically single-handed persistence solving the remaining problems saw it through to a glorious success in the air yesterday. And God orchestrated my showing up there at precisely the right time to lend a hand in documenting it all. What great fun! Steve was so happy he insisted on a celebration so the whole I-TEC family that happened to be around went to Sonny's for a big bar-b-q dinner last night. What a wonderful boost to Jonathan's ambitions for engineering. We were all so happy for him.

And the project, well, it has great promise to revolutionize this particular niche of aviation with significant impact on it's utility for missions applications.

Personality

Keith has more pictures of his new daughter up today. It's true that his fancy camera is only slightly less new than his baby girl, but methinks the volume and quality of his images has much more to do with being captivated by her beauty and profoundly taken by the experience of being her father than it has to do with playing with a new toy.

It's truly amazing how such a brand new person can exhibit such a range and depth of personality. It's neither nature or nurture, it's a miracle of God's creativity to make each human being a fathomless well of unique personhood right out of the gate. I stand in awe of the faith of people who can honestly believe it is all a result of random chance.

Blind

Not me. You. I'm out at Doug's condo at the beach, sitting here on the seventh floor balcony looking out at the beautiful ocean on a gorgeous day. From up here I can see out for many miles. It's a 180 degree panorama of blue-green water all the way to the horizon of half the world. The curvature of the earth is very obvious. It's peaceful and awe-inspiring at the same time. I was just wishing I could show it to you. But, alas, my camera is broken. I'm hoping to be able to replace it before too long. Maybe next time you'll get a picture.

Lily

Keen to face reality
my young friend came to ask of me
to buy or not
what should I do?
what do you think
if it were you?

Get that motorcycle, man
seize the day while you still can
so he did and off we rode
collecting treasured memories

Straining to know the best right thing
to settle or stay on the wing
he loved her so but it's so big
to decide now about the ring

Marry the girl I'd want to say
don't let such sweet love slip away
and finally that's what he did
and rode into a brand new day

Dealing with reality
the give and take
elusively the key to all
the stuff of life
of navigating joy and strife
for good or ill
like stone to knife
can wear even a young man down

They pushed on and soon were led
such amazement lay ahead
a precious gift to them was given
a wonder from the hand of heaven

Lily came into their world
A tiny, radiant, magic girl
Never was more beauty graced
in such a tiny glowing face

Dad and mommy they became
and so much more came with the name
richness to savor, joy untamed
the world will never be the same

Muse Snooze

The muse has been catching up on some sleep lately it seems. Actually I have been writing like a maniac the last couple of days but it's been email and not anything to be shared here. I usually write here because I feel like I just have to or I will burst. There just hasn't been anything for a while. I lost a lot of days with my dental problem - just trying to survive the pain. That's finally on the mend now. For a couple weeks it seems I didn't sleep more than two or three hours at a time. As soon as the ibuprofen started to wear off I'd be up moaning and groaning. A few nights ago I was finally able to sleep through the night and did so for 17 hours. I guess I was tired. So, sleep on muse. You probably need the rest too.