Tag Archives: Icon

ICON of the Lakes

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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!

Back on the water, ready for some fun!
A slightly damp and bedraggled Josh. When you turn too hard the water comes into the plane, you see. (We don’t fly with the windows installed.)
Setting up for the next landing.
It’s hard NOT to have a gigantic grin when you’re flying this thing.
Taking a break to sit on the water. I liked this picture because it gave you more of a sense of scale. It’s not a BIG plane, you can see how narrow the engine inlet is right by my hand.
Me grinning like an idiot, again, because you need to understand just how much fun I’m having.
One last break on the water before we head home.

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!

Officially a commercially rated seaplane pilot!

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!

Adventures in Hydrodynamics

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So this week’s new adventure is all about putting a plane in new and exciting places. Namely, wet ones!

A view out the window of a Icon A5 floatplane on the water
There’s a lake out the window! What’s that doing there?!

I’m getting my Seaplane rating added to my pilot’s license! The plane I’m doing it in is called an Icon A5, and it’s basically a jet-ski with a wing attached, with retractable landing gear so you can land it at a regular airport as well.

Icon A5 on the ramp during preflight inspection
Learning to pre-flight the plane!
Icon A5 viewed from a low angle
You can see how low you would be to the water from this angle.
Icon A5 nose-to-nose with a Falcon jet.
We pulled back into the ramp just as one of the local business jets was leaving. The jet pilots were definitely checking out our plane.

To get your seaplane rating you have to learn a number of different landing and takeoff techniques on the water, as well as several different ways to taxi the plane around on the water, or even “sail” the plane by turning off the engine and letting the wind blow you.

Today we learned how to do that, and got out of the plane to sit on the wing while we floated!

Josh standing up in the cockpit and leaning on the wing while floating
It’s so wild just to to be floating out here.
Josh and Maddie sitting on the airplane wing again
This view gives you a better idea of how low to the water we are when sitting on the wing.
Maddie and Josh sitting on the airplane
Out in the middle of Lake Lewisville, just sitting on an airplane!
The canopy open while we sit on the wing
Looking down into the cockpit with the canopy open, just floating backwards with the wind.

My instructor, Maddie, is big on remembering why we do all this work and making sure we have fun and enjoy flying. Stopping in the middle of a lesson just to float in the lake and enjoy the experience was absolutely amazing. Then we took back off again and did a few more landings, before heading back to the airport!

There’s a lot about flying this particular plane to love. It really is like a jetski when you’re high-speed taxiing across water, because you’re so low down to the water. In the air it handles really well. Flying with the windows out is an amazing experience, both on the water and in the air.

I’ve got a couple more flights for practice before I take the test to become an official seaplane pilot, I’ll try to get some more pictures as I go!