Kevin Quinn sent in these photos, with a brief note: “These are all part of our High Mountain Flying circuit southeast of Lake Tahoe in the High Sierra of Nevada. All spots are above 9,000 feet with Density Altitude well above 10,000.”
High Mountain Flying
Water is a lot “harder” than you think. It’s actually pretty difficult to sink those big tires. The airplane will ” float” on a quarter inch or less of water on pavement so it doesn’t matter much how deep it is.
I bet the owners’ insurance agents and carriers would have the Fred Sanford heart attack if they found out their clients were “skidding” their aircraft on water with a perfectly good operating engine in a non-emergency. Better hide the N numbers if you intend on posting your great photos online or you may get a cancellation letter. How does the endorsement on one’s license read after getting the required ‘water training’? Not being into doing this kind of cool flying stuff (although it looks like a blast) and knowing how it all works, there must be some kind of release clause buried in the fine print of their insurance policies allowing this type of skilled activity…or not. Aircraft insurance experts…what’s the deal?
Love, love the red, white, and blue paint scheme. I could do without the stars on the fuselage however. Anybody else agree?
I have a friend who is an “expert” at skidding on the water. I say expert because she’s still alive. Sometimes it is the only way to get into a backcountry stream bed. The bed or sandbar is too short to land on without skidding on the water.
When you’re flying in the back country or mountains you don’t always have 4000 feet of nice solid concrete available to you. You use what you can get safely.
OK, I’ll be the killjoy here who asks “WHY?!?” As a non-daredevil pilot, I’d like to know more about the ‘risk vs. reward’ aspect of dragging your wheels through water at high altitudes. As a student for example, I considered trying an unsupervised loop, but figured that neither the aircraft nor my skills were were up to the possible consequences.
How does one safely learn the “water skiing” skill of dragging the tires along the water? It seems like the learning process would be totally unforgiving of any error (“oops, I touched/contacted a little harder than I wanted”), or even a lack of smoothness.
Agree! Views of Lake Tahoe I’ve never seen before, living in the area. Is High Mountain Flying an organized group or activity?
Southest of Lake Tahoe is Minden, Gardnerville, Lake Topaz, Yearington Nevada. These STOLs are good for backcountry but lumbering, dangerous and slow trying to climb the Sierra range and fly much inside them…but fine for the Nevada side as most of Nevada is open range and government land. Nevada is already at 5k feet so these planes still need to have enough power to fly at high density altitudes and clear mountains all over Nevada also.
Sometimes the flatlanders in California try to cross and fly in the Sierras with Cessna 172s and underpowered non-turbo Pipers. Look out!
Those big tires must create a whole lot of drag
Awesome pictures!