read an article about flying a

I_.~eave
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home
Flying to EAA AirVenture on straight floats
very really good cross-country begins with a
dream. Okay, I'll admit that a few have a need,
but most of the time long cross-country trips in
light aircraft, especially slow craft, are borne of
much runway-side musing. In the cases of Ric
Henkel, Mike Yolk, Eric Weaver, Doug DeVries,
and Bill Jepson, the musing took place on a beach,
and the strategy, at the outset, seemed downright daunting.
You see, these gentlemen all decided to fly their floatplanes
across the country from points west, north, and south to EAA
AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
The uninformed among you might ask, what's so daunting about that?
Indeed, thousands of people do it, every year. Yes, thousands fly in to the
largest fly-in air show in the world, but only a few skilled (and some would
say, fearless) pilots take on the trip in a straight f1oatplane, that is, a float­
plane without wheels.
Whether your airplane goes 100 knots or so, as was the case for Mike Volk
in his 160-hp Cessna 150, or Hies like Doug DeVries and Bill Jepson's 450-hp
de Havilland Beaver, deciding to fly more than 1,000 nautical miles (nm),
without being able to land at a normal airport and refuel is a real cross-coun­
try challenge.
So, how did they do it? Planning, planning, planning, said everyone of
them. Canadian Ric Henkel is the veteran of straight float cross-countries
to AirVenture, where he volunteers as a judge every year. He has flown the
trip from Winnipeg, Manitoba, numerous times, in either a Stinson 108-3
on Edo 2440s or in his 1953 Cessna 180 with 260 hp on Edo 2960 floats.
That airplane moves him across the ground at around 140 knots, making
the trip from Winnipeg in three easy legs, he said. "You've got to know
your airplane's range-mine's 4:15 hours and you've got to really pay a lot
EM Sport AViation
41
IFR FOR FLOATPLANES without
wheels stands for 'I fly rivers,'
which on this trip included the upper
Missouri River.
Doug Devries and Bill]epson,
nvo engineers and bLUly
floatplane out for a really
ong cross- 0 ltry.
42
JUNE 2006
of attention to the weather, because with no Wheels you may not
have anyplace to land for SO or 60 miles at a stretch during the
trip," he explained. Turning around and heading back to a calm
water landing and mooring has always got to be a strong option
when the weather is questionable, Henkel insisted. "That's how it
is done."
But weather is rust the tip of the planning iceberg-finding fuel
stops in an airplane with straight floats is actually more labor­
intensive.
For Doug DeVries and Bill Jepson, whose flight from Seattle
to Oshkosh was over terrain with less than 1 percent covered by
water, the planning was especially challenging. The two engineers
will readily admit their 2003 cross-country voyage was one of
the most over-planned trips they'd ever made. That said,
everything turned out perfectly. "We had 138 gallons to
burn in five hours, and because of the terrain we were
covering, we added 40 gallons of fuel in cans in the wing
lockers, for a total of nearly 1,000 pounds of fuel
onboard," recalled DeVries. "It turned out that
we didn't need the extra, but for the first time
across such terrain, it sure was nice to have,"
he said. By the time they were ready to go
the flight planning filled a 3-inch three­
ring binder.
They didn't need their reserve, it turns out,
because winds were good and the weather
was fair on the three-day, five-leg trip, but it
could have easily been the other way around.
Henkel knows that, haVing done his trip from
Winnipeg to Oshkosh numerous times. Hen­
kel's typical route takes him to Rainy River, on
the U.S.-Canadian line, where the border cross­
ing is a cinch, then on to Duluth, Minnesota,
where there is typically fuel, and from there on
to Lake Winnebago, and the EAA Seaplane Base.
But he's spent days in Rainy River, and Wausau,
Wisconsin, sitting and waiting for Carrying all this extra fuel and survival
the weather window to open. "That's
when all the preflight planning pays equipment, along with some basic tools in case
off," he said, remembering the safe you are stuck out and need to repair a float a
harbor found at the water ski club and
the excellent accommodations at the an alternator belt, begs t1 e question, is the e
nearby hotel, which provided Henkel any room left in the weight and bala ce or your
and his wife, Linda, with transporta­
pa senger and bags'?
tion while they waited.
"1 can't emphasize it enough," said
Henkel. "Call ahead to each planned stop to see if they'll the night. Just shOWing up on the water somewhere isn't
have avgas, or a way for you to get someone to bring you a good idea," he said, "although I've always experienced
avgas, or, finally, a way for you to get to an airport and extreme hospitality wherever we've had to overnight for
port the avgas, via cans, back to your airplane at the dock weather. Still, they are ready for you if you call ahead."
or on its mooring." Beyond that? "Plan an alternate, and
And finally, he pointed out Canadian rules for mght
then an alternate to your alternate, and phone every possi­
over sparsely populated areas reqUire all pilots to carry
ble stop to confirm that you are legal to land on the water
survival gear that includes camping equipment, food,
there, that there is transportation nearby, and lodging for and water, and that comes in handy if weather leaves you
EM Sport
AViation
43
DE VRIES AND JEPSON LACKED for little
in the Beaver's cavernous fuselage. The
good news is that the emergency gear
went unused.
stranded for the night on an isolated
Carrying all this extra fuel and
body of water, of which there are survival equipment, along with some
many along Henkel's route to Osh­ . basic tools in case you are stuck out
kosh. Henkel, like just about every­ and need to repair a float or an alter­
one with straight floats, carries a bit nator belt, begs the question, is there
of extra fuel in the float lockers, too. any room left in the weight and bal­
He never counts on his full four-hour ance for your passengers and bags?
range, planning all of his landings
The answer for Mike Volk, who
with more than an hour's fuel left in flies the 160-hp Cessna 150, is nope.
his tanks.
"My wife had to fly up to the show
on commercial airlines, because [
needed to carry extra fuel for the
trip from Winter Haven, Florida, to
Oshkosh," he smiled. Volk, whose
airplane meanders along at a steady
95 knots, actually used his 20 gallons
of canned fuel as part of the plan to
get from stop to stop on his three-day
journey north. With 40 gallons in the
tanks and 20 more in the floats ready
to pour, he ca.n extend the airplane's
4.5-hour range for another two hours
or so. iiI have a fuel flow gauge in the
panel, and a. good GPS with which to
determine my point of no return,"
Volk explained.
And weather? iiI pretty much delib­
erately took a routing that would give
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JUNE 2006
me plenty of outs, and I resolved to
tie up the airplane and go out to the
airport to pick up a commerCial flight
at any point along the way where the
weather grounded me for a chunk of
time," he explained. "That's just how
you have to do it when you've got a
schedule to keep." He recently invest­
ed in a Garmin 396, as well, so that
he can see the weather onscreen while
he's in the air. It solves the problem
many seaplane pilots have. "We fly so
low, in most cases, that Flight Watch
can't hear us when we call," said Volk.
"The best I used to be able to do was
listen to other pilot's responses and
guess which way the weather was
going when I was airborne. Now, with
the Garmin, I can see it."
Volk, who heads up the Seaplane
Pilots Association, needed to be at
AirVenture 2005, and wanted to fly
his airplane so that he could leave it
in Minnesota after the show for the
duration of what was forecast to be
a buSY hurricane season at his home
base in South Central Florida. His
routing on the three-day journey took
him to Bagby State Park Reservoir in
Georgia, then on to Guntersville, Ala­
bama, which has an airport, SAl, with
a runway that ends on the shore of a
long lake. "We ported the fuel from
the self-serve tanks across the airport
in the cans r had until the airplane
was all full and the cans, too," said
Volk. Then he hopped back in the air­
plane and flew around the bend to a
Hampton Inn perched on a hill above
the lake. The seaplane was moored in
front of the hotel's beach, and Volk
was set for the night. The next day's
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run was to Bull Shoals State Park near
the Arkansas-Missouri border, to hook
up with another Seaplane Pilots Asso­
ciation member, and then from there
to Stockton Lake, Missouri, northwest
of Springfield, where his grandparents
conld play ground support for the
evening. The next day Volk followed
the Mississippi River to
Quincy, Illinois, then
Keokuk, and on to the
Moline/Quad Cities sea­
plane base-the only sea­
plane base on the entire
route that had a supply
of 100LL fuel! Volk took
advantage and filled up,
then headed north and east to Osh­
kosh, arriVing three days early for the
show.
Erie Weaver, a Cessna 180 driver,
took off from Central Florida last sum­
mer en route not quite to Oshkosh,
but to Surfside Seaplane Base near
Minneapolis, Minnesota, with his
friend Kirk's Cessna iso in tow. The
Cessna 180, with its quicker speed,
longer range, and better load-carry­
ing capacity, was the "sherpa" for
the Cessna ISO, and Weaver took his
job seriously. Besides, tlying together,
even if in separate airplanes, said
Weaver, made the trip more fun.
Mountain Harbor Marina, on Lake
Ouachita, in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
There they found great lodging and
food, as well as a couple of mechanics,
who diagnosed a hiccup in the Cessna
150 as a magneto problem that was
easily fixed before dinner. The next
day the two headed north, stopping
only once at Mark Twain
Lake, in Missouri, before
descending to their des­
tination, Surfside Sea­
plane Base, where both
airplanes were due for
the summer.
DeVries and Jepson
heeded Henkel and
Volk's advice, and were glad they
did. Some of the places they'd been
counseled to land did not have the
avgas that the books, and others, had
said they would. liThe Seaplane Pilot's
Directory, published by the Seaplane
Pilots Association, shows you where
the seaplane bases are, or were,"
The trip across miles of mountains,
prairie and farm lal ,d, requi ed
detailed pIa rri _g.
ylew~
The two began following a similar
route to Volk, stopping at Bagby State
Park Reservoir in Georgia, but then
weather forced them to abandon their
next stop, near Nashville, Tennessee,
for the reservoir in Jackson, Missis­
Sippi, where they made a qUick turn
and headed off on a 3.5-hour leg to
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explained DeVries. "But some of the
listings along our route of flight are
not frequented very often. We were
often the afternoon's entertainment,"
he smiled, remembering several stops
along the way.
Volk counsels against even using
NOAA Sectional Charts for navigation
(though legally you'll have to carry
them or an equivalent). He insists,
and DeVries concurs, that Internet
mapping sites Google Earth (http://
Earth. Google.com), Terra Server (www.
TerraServer.com), and www.TopoZone.
com are better places to look for the
detail that seaplane pilots need. "I can
look at a satellite picture on Google
Earth and actually see the weed line in
the water, or even debris or obstacles,"
says Volk. TopoZone.com wlll help
you identify any U.S. topographical
map and let you view it onscreen or
order it from a USGS map dealer.
The north to south trips have their
challenges, as do their reciprocal, but
it is DeVries and Jepson's trip from
west to east, across miles of moun­
tains, prairie, and farmland, with little
water, that truly reqUired the detailed
planning counseled by those in the
know. It helped, of course, to be fly­
ing the bigger airplane, with the most
range and the most useful load. Not
that they didn't have loading prob­
lems, too.
"I know, I know," laughed DeVries,
"it seems like it would be impossible
for two guys to overload a Beaver on
straight floats, but the first time we
went to weigh everything we wanted
to take with us, we did!" He knew
there was a problem, he remembers,
when Jepson pulled up in his Volvo
station wagon with the entire back,
including the back seats, filled with
camping equipment, electronic gad­
gets, and food for the trip. The weigh­
in was a disaster, DeVries recalled. "I
felt really bad because in the end we
were even leaVing these wonderful
snacks and lunches that Blll's wife
Eva, a very good cook, had made for
us, but we didn't want to try and take
off over gross," he said. They kept the
elaborate planning, including satellite
maps and tips from a friend who'd
done the trip, in the binder, as well
as the fuel and a "trip kit" of repair
items and tools given to them by a
mechanic friend. The next morning
they were off the water at Kenmore
Seaplane Base and headed east, fol­
lOWing Route 90 through the Cascade
Mountain Range to Polson, Montana,
where they landed on Flathead Lake,
at the seaplane base consisting of a
gravel bank at the edge of the airport.
FlO
A fuel truck from Ronan Aviation, the
FBO on the field, came down to the
bank and fueled them up, and they
were off on the next four-hour leg,
which took them to Fort Peck, on the
Upper Missouri River. The closest air­
port was Lasko, some 25 miles away,
and even though they'd called ahead
for fuel, it was an hour or more before
the fuel truck, a 1957 Chevy, arrived
on the scene.
And what a scene it was. "It'd been
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EAA Sport AViation
47
a long time since anyone had seen a seaplane
around there, much less a de Havilland Beaver,"
DeVries remembered. "But everyone was great."
The two stayed nearby in the Fort Peck Hotel and
learned a little bit about the boom and bust of
the sleepy little town of 250, which once housed
40,000 workers during the depression, when the
Fort Peck Dam was constructed.
DeVries' autogas STC came in handy on the
next leg, when they landed at Lakeside Marina
in Jamestown, North Dakota, where there was
no sign of avgas anywhere, even though they
had called ahead to the local airport that had, in
the past, supplied passing seaplanes with avgas.
There were plenty of curious boaters, recalls
DeVries, who followed them, Pied-piper-like,
into the little marina after they landed. "We
were a little bit like, well, electricity coming to
Kansas. A real curiosity to them," he said. Even
so, the marina folks were great about taking
three loads of gas in from a nearby station to fill
up the Beaver and get them on their way. The next stop,
Lino Lake, and Surfside Seaplane Base, near Minneapolis,
Minnesota, had plentiful avgas that was reasonably priced,
as long as you had cash (no plastic accepted). From there
it was just under two hours to Lake Winnebago, and the
EAA Seaplane Base.
Arriving during the show, as DeVries and Jepson did,
meant they had to pull out that three-ring binder again
and flip open to the pages downloaded from www.oshko­
shseaplanebase.com, which contains all the information
they needed, from locations and
THE BEAVER IS TOWED :dents to radio frequencies and
to its mooring by the
aircraft operating guidelines to
dedicated Seaplane
arrival and departure procedures.
Base volunteeers
A qUick orientation pass at 600
feet is advised for all newcomers,
of Airventure.
flying from north to south over
-
,
-...:,~
,i_--·---­
.:,;;,"
the seaplane base and landing ONCE ON THE WATER
area on the lake in front of it, it is time to listen for
with a left turn out after the clearance into the lagoon_
pass, which sets you up for a Planes without radios use
circle back to line up into the light signals or flags.
wind. With more than 100 air­
craft typically operating in and out of the base during
AirVenture, it's imperative that pilots keep a good eye out
for traffic, speak up on the radio, and give way to aircraft
on final approach or maneuvering in the water. Patience
and politeness will get you everywhere-even, eventually,
onto the water safely.
Once on floats arrivals need to watch for signals, either
lights or flags or both, as well as listen on the radio for
permission to taxi into the lagoon, where moorings, water
taxis, and fuel docks wait.
There are also rough water landing and departure pro­
cedures, all spelled out on the website.
DeVries and Jepson found that some of the best AirVen­
ture accommodations are the ones you bring yourself. The
two unloaded the Beaver and set up camp in the tent sites
at the EAA Seaplane Base, which is equipped with portable
toilets and showers, as well as food vendors and free trans­
portation back and forth to the main show at Wittman
Field. The seaplane base proved the perfect respite when
they were tired from pacing the flightline, and had stiff
necks from watching all the afternoon air show regalia.
Rumor has it the food there rocks, too.
With less than one-tenth the activity of Wittman
Field, the EAA Seaplane Base provides all who discover its
charm with a sort of calm that is close to what it must feel
like to be in Oshkosh when there isn't a fly-in going on.
Definitely something worth flying cross-country for, those
pilots who come every year, like Henkel, will tell you. So,
will you come on over? The water's fine. ~.~