That Old Glasy Water Landing Issue

[RKittine]

Just noticed that on Barnstormers there is an add for a company and product that I have not seen before. It is a transducer for the bottom of your plane to act as a radar altimeter and provide height above water information. About $2,500.00. Wonder if anyone has any experience with this product? I sent a screen shot to Jason and asked him to post the ad.

Bob

[jjbaker]

Pictures and ad text shared.

In seaplane flying, what is the most difficult operation? Glassy water ops! Introducing FlareAssist™: An Ultrasonic Altimeter enabling pilots of Experimental Amphibious and Float equipped aircraft to properly judge the height of the aircraft over glassy water. FlareAssist™ consists of an external mounted transducer which uses rapid pulses of ultra-high frequency sound waves, then annunciates the computer-filtered results through the pilot’s headset. Portable and light weight at 3 lbs.

Note: This is not a paid advertising/ endorsement for any specific product and no compensation/ reimbursement has been received to introduce any product here. Source: Barnstormers.com. Barnstormers.com/ Seller retains all liability and responsibility for the accuracy, legality and usability of this product. Shared for informational purposes only. Questions/ Concerns? seaplaneforum@gmail.com Thank you. J. Baker (Owner/Publisher - Seaplaneforum.com)

[Tim McCormack]

"In seaplane flying, what is the most difficult operation? Glassy water ops!"

I disagree. The most difficult operation in seaplane flying is remembering to have the wheels up when you land on water. There are a lot more accidents from that than glassy water. Maybe this thing could be programed to automaticlly raise the wheels when it detects water. The hard part will be determining it's water and not asphalt.

[jjbaker]

I am still confused as to what happens if it fails or the sensor is plugged up...

30... 20... BOOM!!!! 10...Gurgle... 5... 4...Gurgle... 3... 2... Touchdown.... Retard... Retard... Retard... Gurgle Gurgle Gurgle...

[Buter]

Is that an Airbus on floats, then, JJ?

[jjbaker]

Maybe a little Airbuzz, Buter...

Our beloved seaplane industry may be suffering from a Glassy Water Landing complex, or so it seems...

We now need machines and electronics to master the realm of life. One could always go out and learn how to do proper glassy water landings (maybe to include refreshers on how to avoid landing with the gear hanging out) but having a gadget is just so much more cool.

[cubdriver2]

The whole world is heading to hammers with 2 safety switches so you can only swing it with both hands so you can't hit your own finger.

Glenn

[RKittine]

The reason I posted that was not in support of it, but for two reasons, one I was surprised that it took so long to get someone to try to make money on something like that and more importantly, to get some additional dialog going, which it apparently did.

Bob

[Tim McCormack]

The reason I posted that was not in support of it, but for two reasons, one I was surprised that it took so long to get someone to try to make money on something like that and more importantly, to get some additional dialog going, which it apparently did.

Bob

But only among the New York Contingent. (Buter is an honorary member)

[RKittine]

As is Jason, who is Northeast, though the woods of Maine.

[TriPacer]

OK, I'll play devil's advocate a little bit... I don't really see the problem with having an additional layer of safety. I don't think I'd personally invest in it, but it doesn't seem to me that it's deleterious when used properly and cross-checked against what you see out the window.

I used to be the "safety guy" at my company, and although I agree you can't fix stupid, we do put technological safeties in place where hazards exist. We put pinch guards and grates in front of things because people can't seem to stop sticking their hands in places they shouldn't be. We put fume hoods in place to avoid people breathing in harmful vapors, etc. If an accident keeps happening and people keep getting hurt, a technological aid to help prevent that isn't such a bad thing.

[Tim McCormack]

Tripacer is correct on all counts, and, who doesn't like some new technological gadget? But, I too, wouldn't spend my money on one. It did generate a little conversation, though, as Bob was trying to accomplish.

[skimmerone]

You all remember the article on glassy water in the last Water Flying magazine. Well, one of the visitors to our Lakeathon in Lakeland last week was the director of SPA. One of our members brought up the article and Steve was very blunt about it. He was mad as hell that it got published and noted that there are several rebuttals coming in the next issue. He is in agreement that it never should have gotten out. My feeling is that he should OK anything that is published and not leave it up to the editor....after all, the buck stops with him.

On a more positive note, our flight home on Thursday in Bill Greenwald's Renegade was absolutely perfect, with calm winds, then a tailwind, not a bump in the air, and our course led us almost over Newark at 5500' watching the big boys fly underneath us. Our flight down was also pretty good with a five airplane squadron of 4 Lakes and an RV 12. Three of us spent the night at Lake Jackson in Sebring giving the natives a thrill with our landings and the next morning's takeoffs. An adventure in aviation.....

[jjbaker]

I love a good glassy water landing talk. This is Jason the seaplane greenhorn posting, not jjbaker the forum owner...

Gosh did that article get some people's blood pressures up! Holy Mama! Poor Mark Twombly for having printed that without running it by some people...
The past Executive Director of SPA used to read articles before they got printed. If I remember correctly the magazine (editorial, set and article selection) is part of the ED's job description. It's a bit hard to believe Steve wouldn't have known about the article!?!

Usually members don't just blindly submit their articles to the magazine, there is some sort of communication prior to publication. No need to run the member who wrote it out of town, at least he got some reaction and some pulse into this otherwise sleeping dog. I can just imagine the tone of the rebuttals with certain characters pontificating themselves into outer space. One is already blaming the article for one of his airplanes being bent... haha.



About the gadget, I just really don't get why we need electronics for things we have done successfully for decades. If that gadget is mis-adjusted or calibrated wrong, you might get your frame bent. This is not a automotive backup alarm system, where the worst that can happen is a ding in the bumper and a scratch. Drowning is deadly! Electronically assisted drowning is probably (wild guess) just as deadly...

Glassy water is tricky and not something we run into everyday.
You don't have the condition all too often and when you do, you need to be able to do it right the first time around.

jj

[skimmerone]

I forgot to mention that the ICON LSA folks were at the Lakeathon also and talked about the ICON and it's improvements. Did you know that the instrument panel does NOT have a VSI installed? Any comments?

[Buter]

VSI is nice to have, but not a primary flight instrument. A pilot could get by fine without one.

Having said that, I wouldn't buy a new plane without one.

Cheers

Buter - honorary New Yorker

[CFII]

Must not want us to know how slow it climbs....

[cubdriver2]

I forgot to mention that the ICON LSA folks were at the Lakeathon also and talked about the ICON and it's improvements. Did you know that the instrument panel does NOT have a VSI installed? Any comments?

ICON, overweight, overpriced........................

Glenn

PS. Or were you looking for a commet on the VSI?

[Buter]

Glenn, you've just described my wife!

[hotspur666]

Glassy water landing, eh? ZZZZZZZZ... Try to stay awake, as you dont know if you are still in the air or on the water already!

[RKittine]

The discussion originally was started elsewhere about making a true glassy water landing where not only was the water glassy, but where there were no visual clues to altitude,. Nice video. In this case water was truly glassy, but there was plenty of tree line to allow for a LVR and give visual clues on when to start setting up the power, pitch and sink rate. I have never personally been out over water so far that was so still that I lost all clues to my altitude. If you know the barometric pressure, have an accurate altimeter and know the elevation of the water, you should be able to gauge when to start.

Bob

[Tim McCormack]

Bob, that last statement is true if you're sure the barometric pressure hasn't changed since you last set it. It doesn't take much change to make a 2 foot difference.

[akavidflyer]

Bob, that last statement is true if you're sure the barometric pressure hasn't changed since you last set it. It doesn't take much change to make a 2 foot difference.

I have a watch that shows the barometric pressure. I have found it to be very accurate and it works well to set the altimeter by when I am flying off airport. Only time I lost all visual clues was a night landing on a remote lake. That was the highest pucker factor I think I have ever had in a plane.

[hotspur666]

Mostly, you dont have altimeter setting when flying and landing in white out or glassy water...heck, in the arctic,
you dont even have heading in white out as you cant take a sunshot with your astro compass...(that was before GPS)
You just note the heading when landing and reset it while departing.
You mainly keep the wings level and go down at about 100fpm...ground effect will cushion it to 25-50fpm before landing.

You dont know what is an Astro-Compass?
Well, lemme copy that posting from Avcanada:
http://www.avcanada.ca/forums2/viewtopi ... 54&t=22885

Gee, Grampa Curious, can you tell us a story?

"Well, back when the earth was flat and twin otters were made of wood, there were no GPS signals, because there were no sattelites in Space...." said Kindly Old Just Curious.

Well, how did you navigate?

"Well, while kids like Cat Driver were ripping around down south of 80 in their fancy-schmancy Super-3's, with their ADFs, with beat frequency occillators, we were using astro compasses, and maps and howgoezit charts and a watch", said KOJC.

What's a map Grampa, and how many meg of ram did astro compasses have?

"Well, maps of course are history now, but we used them to get an assumed position and compare it with the nav calculations on the back of the howgoezit chart to have an idea about the longitude and latitude we were at", said KOJC. "We used that junk to arrive at the settings we needed to enter stuff on our astro compass, which wasn't even electrically powered!" said KOJC.



But Grampa, whaddya use the astro compass for?

"Well we had to fly in Grid... you see, this far north, the true north pole is really far away from the mag pole:"
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&z=4&ll= ... 5&t=h&om=0

"So we could fly in true some time, but, well, let's say you were gonna fly from the Resolute Bay to the North pole... What would your track be?" queried KOJC.

Well, north of course.

"Well what about when you were leaving the pole and flying back to Resolute, what would be your course then?"queried KOJC.

South of course!

"Okay how about from the Pole to New York or Los Angeles or ..."queried KOJC.

That's easy! It's...oh.

"So Francis Chichester, working with Keith Greenaway, developed Grid Navigation. At the North and South extreme latitudes, the lines of logitude converge, so in using true, an adjustment to tracks called convergence had to be applied. Some pilots. not as good at math as others. got really lost with convergence, and couldn't rely on the compass 'cause it was pointing at the wrong Pole."said KOJC.

"...So they created Grid. With Grid, it is assumed that instead of at the top of the world, north is really the whole Prime Meridian. That is, ninety degrees from where it really is on earth. This kind of squashed the earth so that the lines of longitude and latitude were stretched to fit blocks set at 90 degrees to each other."said KOJC.

"To figure out a Grid track, all a pilot had to do was to measure the true track on a map, and subtract the West Longitude from that. That yielded the Grid track. As you progressed along the track, and the longitude changed, you would adjust the aircraft gyro up or down to account for that change. If you were going straight to the North pole, the track from Resolute to Pole would have been True Track (360)minus the longitude of Resolute Bay 114 "said KOJC.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&z=4&ll= ... 5&t=h&om=0
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... en%26lr%3D

"The return would have been true track (180)- 114= 066"

"To set the aircraft gyro, we used an astro compass"

"We would set the assumed longitude, and the longitude and an old book called an Air Almanac to get the local hour angle of the sun or star. Or we would use a formula [(15 X GMT)- W longitude] to get the Sun's true bearing. Then we would plug in lon and lat, and STB, and turn the astro around till it was facing the sun, then take the compass out of the mount, and read the aircraft's true course. Then we would subtract west lngitude form that, and set the resulting value on the aircraft gyro. Every 30 minutes we would have to do that."said KOJC, rue-fully.

"Of course, some people would forget to wind their watches, but that's another story."said KOJC, with a sly grin.

Wow, that must have been a long time ago, Grampa!

"Well yes, it was, but with fantastically accurate GPSes, nobody ever needs to know that stuff, until the power quits, or the US Govt goes ot selective availability"

Tell us about winding up watches Grampa...

"Well, Grampa's gotta go for his nap now, but maybe you could get Uncle Cat Driver to tell you about Astro Navigation, and Johnson's Point. G'night kids"mumbled KOJC, as he got off his rocker.

AND Grampa Curious toddled off, gin bottle under his arm, for a nap in the noon-day sun.

References
Arctic Canada From the Air.
Contributor(s): Dunbar, Moira With Keith R. Greenaway.
Publisher: Ottawa: Canada Defence Research Board (hardcover) 1956.
Notation: 1st printing. 541pp. Very good. Illustrations, folding maps, bibliography, index. (Arctic/Polar, Aerial Photography, Aviation)
BIN: 8118418616
Arctic Air Navigation
Author: Greenaway, Ketih R.
Publisher: Ottawa: Arctic Research Defence Research Board, 1951,

Hard bound, first edition, frontis. map, illustrated throughout. Two fold-outs in rear pocket contain 1) Sunrise-Sunset-Twilight Nomogram and 2) Graph showing declination of sun and correction to apparent time (as referred to on Pp 114-119). 138pp includes index.

And Kindly old Just Curious's gin-soaked rapidly fading memory.

[RKittine]

Tim, A few feet would not be a problem if you have some space.