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lt's L Seaplane - Keep it Simple

In January of 2006, I was invited to fly witha group of pilots to the Arctic. Ostensibly,the trip was about arctic char fishing, but as

I would later discover, it was really aboutthe flying. Thinking that it sounded likea wonderful adventure I said yes, withouthesitation. I had no idea how a simpleresponse would so change my life, not tomention my financial situation and leisuretime.

In mid April I decided I needed somemore information about the upcomingtrip. I learned that we would be flying fourseaplanes somewhere north of the ArcticCircle (75th parallel), land in the ArcticOcean at night, camp on a rocky beach onthe Boothia Peninsula for four days whilewe fished for arctic char. Avgas had beenbarged up to Taloyoak, Nunavut, the northemmost Inuit settlement on the Norlh Americancontinent, the previous fall and should beavailable to us when we arrived this summer.

by Robert Steneman

I decided I needed to take a look at somecharts to see exactly where we were going.My first reahzation was that I didn't have anycharts that went that far north. After a call toJeppesen I had what I needed, only to reahzethat this little fishing trip was a lot furtherand potentially more dangerous than I hadexpected. I had flown wheeled airplanes intoCanada and the Norlhwest Territories for yearsbut never this far north or this remote. Damn

- this is one serious trip!

It was then that I decided that a seaplanerating would be a really good idea. I wouldbe flying almost 4000 nm over nothing butwater, rocks and trees in a seaplane equippedwith amphibious floats. I had long coveted aseaplane rating, but because of other job andflying constraints I just never took the timeto get it. Now I had the time and a reason toactually do it.

Since I was living in northern Minnesota forthe summer, I contacted local seaplane guru

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Mal Kamowski and scheduled a week toget my ticket. The moment we fired uphis Cessna 182 and taxied out for takeoff Iknew I was hooked. I don't think I ever quitsmiling the entire week.On Friday I was the proud owner of a shinynew Airplane Single Engine Sea (ASES)rating and ready for the great adventure.

A few days after EAAAirVenture 2006 wedeparted for the Artic. Ten days and nearly4000 miles lateq most at or below 500' agl,we arrived back in Minnesota. Halfwaythrough the trip Irealized that I needed tofigure out a way to own a seaplane like theone I was flying in - a Cessna 182 withAerocet amphibious floats, a ContinentalIO550 ported and polished to 330 HP andstate of the art avionics. Since I didn't thinkthat my friend and fellow aftic adventurer,Denny Gartner, would sell me his, I contactedJeff Voight at Park Rapids Aviation about thepossibility of building one for me that I couldtake delivery of the following spring. NOPROBLEM! A11I needed to do was find asuitable airplane - and start writing checks.

I was encouraged when I opened the latestedition of Trade-a-Plane and found almostthree pages of used Cessna 182's. Thisshould be abreeze, right? After two monthsof flying around the country looking at junkI finally located a beautiful, clean, low-time1980 Cessna 182Q at the Monroe, WI airport.The only problem was that it had a nearlynew engine. I needed a core, preferablyrun-out, to exchange for the new IO550.NO PROBLEM! There just happened to beanother clean, low-time Cessna 182P on thefield with a run-out motor, out of annual,dead battery and flat tires.

After convincing the owner that he probablyshould sell his airplane, since he hadn't had amedical certificate in over 5 years, I boughtthat airplane also and, with ferry permits inhand, had both airplanes flown back to ParkRapids, MN for conversions. The idea, nota very good one as it turns out, was to takethe motor off of the 1980 and put it on theI976 and send the run-out motor to AirPlainsas a core. Unfortunately, installing the 0470from the 1980 on the 1976 required a fieldSTC - NO PROBLEM! Just write anothercheck. Since I was getting in deeper than Ihad originally anticipated, I convinced mygood friend Denny to "partner" with me onthe 1976 * not his best decision. We decidedthat the best way to sell the airplane was tocompletely refurbish the airplane, install afloat kit and straight Aerocet floats and seeif it would fly with the 0470 - it did, but notwell.

We took the airplane to EAAAirVenture2007 and put a For Sale sign on it. It wonBest Metal Seaplane for Park Rapids Aviation- they were using it at the seaplane base asa static display and had entered it into thejudging competition. Unfortunately, we stillowned the airplane after the show with nogood prospects, so decided to take it offoffloats and store it for the winter. Perhaps abigger motor and more avionics would get itsold in the spring.

Shortly after putting it back on wheels afellow from Canada called and expressed aninterest. With the US/Canada dollar disparityfavoring the Canada dollar, he thought itwould be a good time to by an airplane inthe US. (The fact that he and his wife hadrecently sold several Canadian fishing camps

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probably had something to do with it also).He drove to Park Rapids to look at theairplane and decided that while "it wasn'ta Beaver", it would probably do the job forhim* thank you God! Before he left town,Jeff Voight sold him a new IO550 port &polished to 330 HP, a new seaplane prop andsome other stuff that he just had to have.On a very cold day (-10 below zero) in lateDecember, I delivered the aircraft to him inNakina, ONT. End of one airplane.

Now back to the 1980 Cessna 182Q. Startingwith the mind-set that "it's a seaplane stupid- keep it simple" I tried to keep the projecton budget - didn't work. After spending over30 hours in Denny's airplane equipped witheverything but radaq it just seemed that tocome all this way and not "do it right" wasprobably not the right thing to do. As theproject progressed, I opted for new paint,new interior, new glass, new exterior plastic,cowl fastener STC, Door Stewards, Cabin AirWemacs, Rosen Visors, exhaust fairing, newavionics (GNS 530 I 4301327), PMA-8000Baudio panel, S-Tec 55X Autopilot, EI EngineAnalyzer, EI Fuel Flow Indicator, new motor(Continental IO550 port and polished to 330HP), new McCauley seaplane prop, seaplaneexhaust, wing extensions, VG kit, SeaplanesWest Engine Mount, Seaplanes West FloatKit andAerocet 3400LAmphibious Floats. Idid draw the line on a Garmin MX200, flightdirector with altitude pre-select and traffic -after all, "it's a seaplane stupid". Acfually,traffic would be a really good thing.

I took delivery of the seaplane in June of2007 and have been smiling ever since. Welive in northern Minnesota (land of 10,000lakes) in the summer and keep the seaplaneeither in my hangar at the Pine River airportor on my rail on the beach. We use theseaplane extensively during the summer forfishing trips into Canada and to ferry childrenand grandchildren back and forth fromMinneapolis to our cabin. I also find that Igive a lot of rides to friends on the lake.

My friend Denny and his wife live just downthe beach from us and we do a lot of flyingtogether. We are fortunate that our wivesenjoy the seaplane trips almost as much aswe do. They especially enjoyed the trip toChurchill, Manitoba to look at the polar bears

and beluga whales. We have also flown theseaplanes to Mackinac Island, Michigan;Greenville, Maine for the InternationalSeaplane Fly-In, participating in allof thecompetition events; Bar-Harbor, Maine; downthe coast to Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard;New Haven, Conn;Niagara Falls, NY; andfinally back to Minnesota. We also took theseaplanes down to the Bahamas a coupleofyears ago, but because ofunusually highwinds, never put them in the water - majorbummer! We are still hopefulthat a plannedtrip to Alaska will happen in the next coupleofyears.

As the saying goes, if I had known howmuch fun this was I would have done ityears ago. Having spent the majority ofmy flying career above 25,000', flying at orbelow 500'is absolutely inspirational. Thespaciousness of the cabin in the Cessna 182,the capability of the Garmin equipped panel,the power and reliability of the IO550 and theruggedness of the Aerocet Amphibs makesthis a truly remarkable seaplane. I can't giveenough credit to Jeff Voight of Park RapidsAviation, Tom Hass of Park Rapids Avionics,Jim Schwerman of Seaplanes West, LynnRiveland of Riveland's Aircraft Interiorsand Carolyn Kelly ofAirPlains for all oftheir help in making this wonderful seaplanepossible. I can't think of another seaplane Iwould rather own.. ... was that a turboBeaver that just flew over?

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