Had a good friend ask me to fly him in his husky on Amphibs to Central Florida for a meeting. The plan was I fly up he fly back. He hasn't been flying much and just wasn't comfortable going alone. I told him sure sounds like fun.He obtained permission to land in a private lake and guy would pick us up there. I'm thinking this gonna be fun. I looked at it on google earth and thought its was plenty big enough to get in & out of. I have about 50hrs in this from 4-5 years ago when he got it so I already knew these things are kinda dogs and you need big lake to operate out of. Now I haven't flown it since flying CC on floats so I really don't remember all it performance issues. When we got there I found that my little canal on google earth that I thought I could use for take off was closed off and trees had grown across it. When I landed the first words out of his mouth was think we can get out,I thought O'boy not good when the guy who owns the plane ask that and I'm just not used to flying something that won't get out of what you get into. Looking out I thought heck I have 3/4 mile that should be plenty. The guy who picked us up asked is that pond big enough to take off in. Owner said no but Chucks half nuts not afraid of anything.
We went on to our meeting. We got back and he said I don't think I can get it out of here you fly us back.
I taxied out and I'm looking at this lake and it just doesn't look that big anymore. What looked to be the Longest run had maybe a 5knt quartering head wind. The plane handles terrible in the water so I didn't taxi to close to the docks worried I wouldn't get turned around by them so probably left some runway behind me. Half way across the lake it finally got on step and I'm having to decide at what point I need to stop if I'm not off the water. (Mind you a CC would of been off the water before I even got the second rise in this thing)I saw it was accelerating and picked a spot I would stop if not off ,it finally had enough speed to milk it off with the flaps and we started climbing ( on a god day that 500Ft min)We cleared the houses by 150 Ft or so. It was dead silent in the back. Then he says were you thinking about aborting? I said no we were accelerating and had picked a spot we had to be off by. Beside there was that sheriff helicopter circling watching us take off so I knew we would be rescued pretty quick😀
On the way back I decide to landed at a local airboat restaurant on a BIG river for lunch. As I'm taxing up to the dock I'm having to push the rudder pedal as hard as I can and the thing just didn't want to turn. He's has some hip issues so I knew he wouldnt be much help and I would have to jump out and grab the dock so I'm trying to get in position to deal with on my own (I'm sure I was cussing it pretty bad) So we sit down for lunch and had quite the conversation. I think I started with something like that has to be worst plane I ever flew in my life and I understand why you don't fly it very often. I got home and my legs were actually sore from pushing on the rudders and just wore out from having to fly this thing for just 2 1/2 hrs. When we got back we sat in the hanger I explained to him he would get 10 times the enjoyment of flying if he had a carbon cub and flying should be fun. I said this thing is like work the Whole time your in it. There nothing fun about it. We're cruising at 90mph 12gal Hr and it feels like a German tank with manual steering,we are running it a 25/2500 to keep it flying. I have a red mark on my leg from the flap handle rubbing on it the whole time, it's super tight inside,has no storage,pull the throttle back turns into a lawn dart. He's agreeing with me.
He talked a lot on the way up about how much he enjoyed us taking A CC over to the west coast,how nice it flew and couldn't believe we were doing over 100 and burning 6gals hr.
I don't think there is anybody enjoys flying more than I do. That's the first time I can ever remember getting out of a plane totally miserable.
Yes it going up for sale and working on his wife for a Carbon Cub. 😀