Mesa Sea Monster?

How to say you’ve never worked on saltwater floatplanes without actually saying it

To do list:
Corrosion control
Corrosion control
Repair leak
Corrosion control
Inspection
Oil Change
Corrosion control
Corrosion control
Repair leak
Corrosion control
Corrosion control
Replace props due to erosion
Corrosion control
Corrosion control
Corrosion control
Corrosion control
Corrosion control
Repair leak
 
I bet that job was a weird existence. “Well, I’m off to work. Be home…probably.”

When your job is actually kind of dangerous you don’t worry about that sort of thing at all. That happens to other guys, other families, etc. Of course that’s a lie you tell yourself, but it’s a believable lie because if it happened already it’s not like you’d be around to worry about it.

HEMS can be some extremely risky flying, and yet people still do that job and don’t seem to worry about it.
 
When your job is actually kind of dangerous you don’t worry about that sort of thing at all. That happens to other guys, other families, etc. Of course that’s a lie you tell yourself, but it’s a believable lie because if it happened already it’s not like you’d be around to worry about it.

HEMS can be some extremely risky flying, and yet people still do that job and don’t seem to worry about it.

That’s precisely how I feel about lithium ion battery fires.
 
Right - if I was driving big international cargo that’s like the scariest thing I could think of? And a relatively high risk of exposure. Spooky stuff…

I don’t know, we’re all really bad at assessing risk and we’re scared of the wrong things as an industry…

We tried to get special containers in this last contract. The company said it would be inconvenient and the arbitrator agreed.
 
There was a snake oil salesman that was trying to drum up investors for WIG's in Southeast Alaska 20 something years ago. Back then it looked like they would fall under the jurisdiction of the USCG and not the FAA, similar to hovercraft. So better start working on your 100 ton licence vs getting that float rating.
 
I think it would be awful trying to navigate one of these things out of New York or Boston harbor.

under current COLREGs rules, a WIG craft has to give way to every other watercraft. The only one it wins is overtaking another WIG.

it’d be like driving one of operations vehicles or buses at LAX and you have to stop for every airplane that taxis on B or C taxiway just in case it’s going to turn into the alley.

Youd spend most of your time trying to do traffic avoidance with that slow containership or harbor ferry.

you’d never get out of puget sound without zigging or zagging every 20-30 seconds at 180kts. Since you’re moving 6-9x faster than every other displacement craft or 3-4x faster than non displacement craft.

at least a seaplane, once it’s off the water and in the air no longer has to deal with watercraft. A WIG is just stuck dealing with watercraft the entire time never gets to be a seaplane.

even a seaplane wins right of way over a WIG craft.
 
Last edited:
Done. That was a damn great adventure.

image.jpg

Takeoff in Leopoldville sounded sketch.
 
Back
Top