ICON of the Lakes

Further adventures in seaplane life! Lake-plane life? Amphibious life, certainly. What’s the word for an amphibian that also flies? It’s a boat, it’s a plane, it’s the Icon A5!

Here’s a photo-dump of more of my semi-aquatic adventures!

So after about 6 days of training, it’s time to take the test to become a seaplane pilot. Because I’m already a commercially rated pilot the test basically just covers the seaplane-specific stuff. We have to go out and prove we know how to scout a good landing spot, perform the various types of landings and maneuvers, and operate the plane as a boat while we’re on the water.

And here’s the picture of me with the examiner after passing the checkride!

This has been such an incredible amount of fun. The Icon A5 is an amazing plane to fly. It’s designed to be easy to handle, and incredibly safe. It’s actually first aircraft ever to be certified “spin resistant”, which means it’s verging on impossible to get it into an uncontrolled state. It also folds up so that you can put it on a trailer, or in a regular house garage. Really quite an incredible bit of engineering.

Later this summer Maddie and I will go out for some recurring practice in it, and learn to do some of the more advanced maneuvers, so look forward to more pictures later on!