Hot Air, Wings & Flying Things
Back on the Water With the A-22 Capetown
After having flown the land version of the FPNA A-22 Valor LSA in October 2008, Jim Knowles had invited me to come up and fly the A-22 Capetown LSA on amphibious floats at his friendly and top notch Southern Maine Aviation (SMA) operation at Sanford.(www.southernmaineaviation.com; 207-324-8919; e-mail : fly@southernmaineaviation.com ). Due to difficulties with the aircraft and with some health issues on my part slowing the process, I finally got to fly the Capetown in June 2010.
I got to fly with Jake Speidel, an excellent seaplane instructor with extensive experience flying seaplanes in places including Alaska despite his relative youth. He gave me the opportunity to fly the plane through three water landings and takeoffs, even though I hadn’t flown seaplanes since 2004. He also talked me through the final landing at Sanford, my first ever runway landing on amphib floats. (All three of the Southern Maine Aviation instructors I have flown with have been excellent.)
The A-22 is a small, high wing LSA with incredible cockpit visibility, with the entire doors and a large part of the fuselage behind the seats being clear plastic. Basic construction is aluminum with rivets, but the wings, elevator, and rudder are fabric covered. It has a three blade composite Warp Drive prop with nickel leading edges. Jim and Jake said that the nickel edges on the prop really stopped erosion from water spray. One unusual feature is full span flaperons (combined ailerons and flaps) which have three positions which correspond to 0, 10 degrees, and 20 degrees. The Capetown has a 100 hp Rotax. The Valor had the 85 hp version.
Compared to the A-22 Valor, the Capetown sits high on its amphibious floats. One oddity is the very long non-retracting nose wheel which sticks down all the way to the pavement between the floats. One might think it would be a problem in the water, but it never seemed to be. The preflight showed that some of the minor problems with the Valor had been corrected in the Capetown. There was now an oil door on the cowling, so the cowling no longer had to be removed to check the oil. Carb heat is always full on in the Capetown, so there is no longer a reverse action carb heat knob. One ground hazard : the skinny pitot tube is at eye level. SMA puts a big foam rubber tube on it on the ground.
There was no GPS or other Nav radio in the plane. The six light gear indicator lights (three blue lights on the left for wheels up/water landings; three green on the right for wheels down/runway landings) on the left of the panel and the pneumatic system pressure gauge on the right side took up panel space used on the A-22 Valor for a Garmin panel dock for a Garmin x96 GPS. The plane has full size airspeed and altimeter gauges on the left side of the panel right in front of the pilot, and a single Dynon in the middle of the panel. I never looked at the Dynon vertical tapes, using the Dynon only for engine tachometer settings.
The gear is pneumatic driven with an electric pump that boosts pressure to 120 psi. There are two emergency gear lowering methods. One is to pull the mechanical uplock handle to dump the gear. The other is a small bicycle CO2 inflator for pressurizing the system through a Schrader valve on the upper right panel. The water rudder lever is by the pilot’s right leg along the center console.
It does have some limitations. Even with the plane being allowed 1430 lbs by LSA regs as an amphibian, it has a gross weight of 1323 lbs and an empty weight of 882 lbs. for a useful load of 441 lbs. That only allowed 8 gallons of avgas onboard with Jake and me. Since the fuel burn is around 5 gph, this allowed us only about an hour of flying time with reserves. (With one adult male aboard, a smaller woman or child in the other seat would allow more fuel and more flying time.) The amphib has a max crosswind limitation (on land) of 9 mph. With the draggy floats and struts and the long nosewheel, it requires around 5200 rpm in cruise, more than the A-22 Valor. And we had to put on small life preservers before starting the engines.
In the air, I had found the A-22 Valor to have some of the nicest flying characteristics of any LSA I have flown, as well as some of the nicest landing characteristics of any high wing LSA. The Capetown flew very much like the Valor. We used one notch of flaps for normal takeoffs and one notch for normal landings. Even with the amphib floats the Capetown jumped off the runway and lifted off nicely from the water. In the air, there is good responsiveness to the controls and the plane flies beautifully. We headed for a nearby pond to try some water landings and takeoffs.
It has nice water landing characteristics. Control responses are predictable. It was easy to adjust for changing conditions. I was able to easily correct when a gust of wind down a slot at the side of the lake caused us to “balloon” up just as I was about to touch down on one of the landings. We did two landings with one notch of flaps, and one with full flaps. All were easily controllable landings. The plane has excellent handling characteristics getting up onto the step, both for high speed taxiing and on the takeoff runs. It was easy to feel and sense the “sweet spot” for least resistance running on the top of the water.
The large plastic doors and sides were a huge advantage when we did a low pass over the lake to assure it was clear to land, and to note where underwater rocks and shallow spots were. (Fortunately marked with floating markers that we could use to set up our landings.) Setting up for my first water landing I reduced power, brought in one notch of flaps (swinging the overhead flap lever to the right and down). The plane seemed to be cocked at about a 15-20 degree angle to the right as there seemed to be a crosswind from the right. Jake had me carry a bit of power on short final for each landing. We also had to avoid a boat on the lake. The distractions made me a bit tentative but I made a good first landing. There was not a lot of spray coming up off the floats, a good characteristic.
One of the water rudder cable connectors had detached on the first landing, so we were limited to right turns, but we made it work. Jake said to bring up the water rudders, put in the power, and try a step taxi (where the regular rudder would be effective). For takeoff, Jake had me bring up the water rudders and bring in the power. We got on the step, and I lifted the left float out of the water to shorten the takeoff run and the plane flew off nicely.
On the second landing, just as the plane was about to touch down, a gust of wind came down the slot in the lake and the plane ballooned up. I put in a bit of power and adjusted correctly and landed just a bit farther down the pond. On the final water landing, Jake had me do a full flap landing (something the instructor in the A-22 Valor had insisted we not do). Jake said to keep in more power. I made a nice final water landing.
I took time as we prepared for the final takeoff from the lake to savor the beauty and peacefulness of being in a floatplane on a Maine pond. It was beautiful, and I took some pictures on the water as memories of the beautiful flight. I did another nice takeoff, this time without lifting a float out of the water but by concentrating on optimizing speed on the water.
Back at Sanford airport, for my first ever landing on amphibious floats, Jake briefed me to fly in at a flatter attitude with power for the runway landing. My amphib float runway landing wasn’t ideal (a bit of final adjusting and just a bit of a thump on landing), but it was respectable.
I was incredibly fortunate to have the chance to fly the Capetown on and off both water and land. Unfortunately, Jim Knowles told me that insurance costs are too high for him to make money putting the wonderful LSA amphib on his rental line. It is not clear if he will put the plane on wheels, or if he will keep it as a smaller companion to his big flying water toy, a WW II vintage PBY!
Jim Ellis