WOW! Such diff world's!
Biggest tires, Biggest Prop, Biggest gearlegs, P-ponks, V-Brace, Slowest Landings, Steepest Climbs, Full Flaps, Protect tail wheel, land on tire tracks, alders tapping wing tips on both sides (until you chainsaw them back), Heavy on Brakes. Alaskan style. But then there is landing on Mud, Sand, Ice, etc.. You definitely have to set your plane up for your OWN NEEDS. Even if it looks girly!
And IMHO every pilot should be proficient in Wheel, 3-point, X-wind landings, and know when to use them. I can't imagine an instructor letting a tailwheel student graduate otherwise. OK, maybe not my Humble Opinion!
Watched a C-180 " dip a wing " cartwheeled, took one wing, then the other and the tail aft of the cabin. about three rotations if I remember right. Ended up in the surf about 150 feet from shore. One boy was seen holding on to a tire ( Tires up ) Coast guard later found him a couple miles away, I found the woman next morning in the rocks on the beach a half mile away.The man washed in about a week later, the other boy never showed up. Plane was buried in the sand within a week.
Sounds like you're talking about a wheelplane,not a floatplane. How did the wing-dipping happen? Wave-top maneuvering that went astray? Or sme kind of forced landing in the water?
However it happened,that sure was a terrible thing. Especially with everyone dying (?) in spite of being only (!) 150 feet offshore. So close & yet so far...
Don't really know what the cause was. Was told he was a low time c-180 pilot. Three planes flew in to dig clams. A 20 to 25k wind was quarting across the beach and he was the last to land. A wing came up on roll out and started to ground loop, he put full power and recovered and took off into the surf, all three tire tracks went into the water. From my position watching through a 10x glass saw a lot if spray, then the plane became airborne went out to sea about a mile or so made a flat turn and returned on the same track never more than 50 feet above the water with full power all the time. Saw the tires hit a wave then a few seconds later the right wing dropped and hit the water, it then cart wheeled. Why he was unable to clime???????? WAG- maybe trim to far forward?????? maybe controls jamed ????????? Took us twenty minutes to reach the beach with lines and were unable to reach the wreck in the surf. Cold water shuts a body down pretty fast around here. I think the boy and the woman got out, the man probably tried to get the other boy??????? Having almost drowned in cold water myself I know that after a couple minutes without air your muscles quit working so you are unable to do much yourself. And it gets real peacefull. The womans body only had one small cut between her eyes other wise appeared unhurt.
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