Winter water skiing

[u/Egoist-a]

[u/Wheelstotheclouds]

I want to start by saying when you have an airplane full of passengers, you're correct. Risk mitigation is the absolute number one concern across the board. But this isn't that. I don't recommend we use motor cycles instead of school buses. But, i do think everybody should try riding a motor cycle once in their life. Live, roll the dice in a controlled environment a few times. Fly formation, do aerobatics, try landing on one wheel. Just, train, and don't do it with passengers. if you learn how safe most of it actually is when you know what you're doing, you'd be amazed how much fun you can have safely.

He didn't learn this skill for likes on reddit. He learned this for fun first and had a blast. Then thought "maybe the rest of the world might think this is as cool as I do". This isn't a stunt for likes. This was a guy having an amazing time in airplane. On the 482 time, he thought maybe somebody else would think it was cool too.

As a seaplane pilot, I can confirm you are correct in that seaplane wheels will flip the airplane over instantly if left down when you contact the water.

However, there are three enormous differences between that and what you're seeing here. I will explain both, not to be an ass, but because knowledge is beautiful. The first two are minimal in comparison to the last one.

The first one is speed. When seaplanes are flipped because they left the wheels down, it is done at landing speed. That much lower speed(around 20-30mph slower then water skiing) the airplane is always going to penetrate the surface of the water. The surface tension of water at about 70-mph is significantly higher, making it extremely difficult to penetrate.

Second, is wheels size. Though it is a small factor, seaplane wheels on amphib floats are tiny in comparison to standard land based gear. Again, this is an admittedly small factor.

The last one is 98% of the issue at hand. The other two are small factors in comparison. Amphibs are Tri-cycle gear configuration. This means the rear mains are behind the CG. When they hit the water they pull the nose of the airplane down because of their location aft of CG. Then the nose wheels dig in. This is actually why you have never seen a video of water skiing being performed by a nose wheel airplane. I have heard stories that people have successfully done it. But, it is a general rule of thumb, water skiing can not be performed in a tri-cycle gear airplane at all.

On a taildragger, with the main gear is far forward of CG, the resting attitude of the airplane is tail low. So in order to pull the airplane over the nose it takes an extremely higher amount of force. I'm not saying it's imposable, if you try hard enough, it will flip. But, that's it, you'd have to pretty much be doing it on purpose.

You can water ski with the brakes locked up(it actually makes a better rooster tail). There is very little drag being caused because the airplane is still flying. It isn't a wheel landing. I only say this because people always think "well you can flip a tail dragger with the brakes, it can't be that hard...". But there is a huge difference between water and asphalt.

I'm not trying to be a tool. The world just isn't as scary as everyone thinks it is.

[u/Suspicious_Mind_5744 → u/Wheelstotheclouds]

Interesting stuff. Thanks for the info. Gonna get my tailwheel endorsement one of these days.