Flight Experience 7 – Maule M7-235B Super Rocket Seaplane

Few weeks before I moved to China in March of 2007 I was still in Florida. I was working as a flight instructor but I also wanted to get one more pilot rating under my belt before leaving the country.

Florida is full of flight schools and the weather is normally good for flying all year around. Not only land based aircraft pilots are trained in Florida but there are also several seaplane flight schools.

The thought of flying a small seaplane somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness or in the tropics of South America had always exited me. Although the prospects of getting a seaplane job with just the license sounded slim I decided to get the license anyway.

Maule M7-235B Super Rocket Amphibian

Florida Seaplanes Flight School

I was living in Daytona Beach and the closest the seaplane school was in Altamonte Springs, which is near Orlando. The school was called Florida Seaplanes. It’s a family business that is still operating today.

I scheduled the course by calling the school, and I started my training couple days later.

My Flight Instructor

When I first drove to the flight school I thought I was lost. I entered a normal looking suburb neighborhood and didn’t see a lake anywhere nearby. But the address was correct so I parked my car and walked to the door. Decent looking house, but nothing over the top. I rang the bell and an old dude called Rich opened the door.

He was wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and slippers; the Florida style. Rich was the owner and the founder of the school.  I heard some kind of half-barking-half-whining dog sounds somewhere around the corner. I asked what the heck is that??

Rich took me around the corner to his garage and there he had about a dozen golden retriever puppies there! “What th..” I thought. “Oh, I breed them and sell them.” Rich said.

At least that’s what I think he said; I can’t remember if he was just giving them away or selling them; or if he was breeding them or what was the deal. In any case they were well taken care off and some people came over to pick up some puppies just after my first ground school lesson.

Anyway, Rich was a great flight instructor with extensive experience in all kinds of flying.

The School

After that he showed me around the school, which was basically his own house. We walked through the house to the backyard, and it was amazing! The house was by a lake and he had two seaplanes parked in the back! Imagine that; he could just walk about fifty meters from his door to his plane, takeoff, and land to just about any lake, river, or actual airport in Florida. How cool is that??

Seaplane Flight Training

To get a seaplane rating is quite simple if you already have a license to fly a land class airplanes. All I had to do is complete five lessons of ground school classes, followed by five flight lessons, and a checkride with and FAA examiner at the end.

Two floatplanes at the Florida Seaplanes flight school. 

Seaplane Ground Lessons

I completed the seaplane flying ground school lessons in couple of days. There were quite a few subjects but I went to the school well prepared. I had read a book called How to Fly Floats few days earlier.

I was going to recommend that book for anyone looking to fly seaplanes, but I just noticed the price now is 107 dollars while I paid 6 bucks for it! Weird, but luckily I still have the book. Now if you are looking for a seaplane flying book you can find a link for a free FAA seaplane book from my “Flight Training Page“. It’s the free book #24 at the moment.

The ground school included subjects such as:

• How floats work and how to install them.
• Floatplane safety.
• Maule M7 Airplane systems, limitations, and procedures.
• Floatplane preflight inspections.
• Taxiing and turning on water.
• Normal, crosswind, glassy water, rough water, and max performance takeoffs and landings.
• Ramping, docking, mooring, beaching and approaching a buoy.
• Sailing with power off and power on.

Lots of stuff to learn, but we covered it all in couple of days. And still had some time to play with the puppies! 🙂

Flight Training in a Floatplane

The flight training took another three days. In the air the aircraft acts just like any other airplane I had flown previously, so the flying part wasn’t difficult.

I did my training in a Maule M7-235B Super Rocket seaplane. It can also be called a floatplane because it has two big floats attached to it unlike other “flying boat” type seaplanes.

That’s me doing a touch and go in the Maule M7 floatplane. My MBA classmate from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University was in the backseat filming. If you are in China you can see it from this YouKu Link.

Taxiing a Floatplane

Difficult part was the water operations such as taxiing and sailing. There were two ways to taxy on water. During slow speed taxy you use water rudders to turn the plane. For high speed or so called step taxy you bring the water rudders up and steer the plane on the water.

The water rudders actually make it a “complex” category plane although it doesn’t have a retractable landing gear.

It was really fun to do high speed taxiing in the plane. I just had to add enough power to bring the floats on top of the water and it would just glide over the water with minimum resistance or friction. Turning with the air rudders make the turns wide and we were drifting like a car in the The Fast and the Furious making figure eights!

Takeoffs and Landings in a Floatplane

As I mentioned the flying in a floatplane is just like any other plane so the main focus of the training was in takeoffs and landings.

After learning how to taxy the takeoffs were not too difficult. It is a different feeling from taking off with a seaplane compared to a normal plane because the seaplane can be jumping up and down if there are any waves.

One thing to check out for was to make sure there were no alligators anywhere nearby when you were about the take off! In Florida those gators are everywhere and you wouldn’t want to hit one while taking off.

Same thing goes for landings. First you fly over the lake, river, or what ever body of water you are planning to land on and make sure there is nothing on your “runway”.

I have seen videos with glassy water landings gone bad and they are not pretty. If you don’t pay attention to the flight instruments, and try to land visually instead, you can very easily hit the water hard and crash the plane. 

Flying with Rich

It was a great experience flying with Rich. I learned tons of stuff from him and the training was relaxed. One of the coolest things we did was land on a river, parked the plane, and walked to a restaurant by the river for a lunch break! How cool to own a sea or floatplane!?!

My Checkride

After my five hours of flight training it was time for the FAA practical exam (checkride). The checkride didn’t take long; less than an hour actually. All we did was do different types of taxiing on the lake. Then we did a few different types of takeoffs and landings, and that was it.

I got the single-engine seaplane rating added to my commercial pilot license. While getting the license doesn’t make me an expert in seaplane flying it was definitely very rewarding experience to get it.

By now I would probably have to do another five hours of training before being able to rent a seaplane, but I hope I get to fly seaplanes again someday! 🙂

FunkyPilot Vesa in Front of a Maule Floatplane back in 2007. 

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~FunkyPilot Vesa