Hard Floatplane Landing

[pelmet]

From a few years ago. They put on a bit of an airshow for July 1 but it didn't end up well with the hard landing....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC5yscm9dsI

[doiwannabeapilot]

Was this in the 1970s ?

[jakeandelwood]

Jesus, he came down hard.

[PilotDAR]

Jesus, he came down hard.

Well, yes....

More to the point, is that the plane was pretty well stalled on the way down, and when he pulled to flare, nothing happened, as he just deepened the stall. Fortunately for him, it hit the water before the plane could aerodynamically pitch down - but it was about to! Whether he had some power on or not really was not making much difference at that point, though full power might have helped the situation.

It is exactly this type of unarrested/unarrestable descent which I train pilots to prevent by not flying slower than Vy, unless absolutely necessary. The pilots who drag the plane off the surface, and then climb away steeply below Vy put themselves in exactly this situation. If it quits, they will likely get the nose down, and enter a glide, but they may not accelerate to Vy, or a suitable glide speed to provide the reserve of speed needed to allow the plane to flare. Pull, the nose may come up, but the plane will keep going down.

[Heliian]

Was this in the 1970s ?

Mid to late 90s

[valleyboy]

I watched that and it's difficult to judge with a movie but I have to say yes it was a total screw up and a sold hit but I wonder if a factory built and certified aircraft the end results would be the same. The engine came right off the mounts and prop cut the float from what I can tell. I've seen landing that the aircraft survived unscathed with similar impacts. One thing is apparent that a homebuilt can be less robust. Those are terrible floats and was he in rough water at some point before this incident - talk about swiss cheese, many holes lined up ----

[Mick G]

Murphy Rebel Kit......after seeing this, I really am doubting the integrity of the engine mount. Does anyone know if this was addressed and or strengthened? I agree that had the engine not fallen off and cut the float, there is a high probability that the aircraft would have stayed upright.

[mosky]

This is one of the things that can give an amateur built airplane a bad name very quickly. Builder installed a larger engine against the kit manufacturer's recommendations and also did not strengthen the firewall or beef up the engine mounts. Add to that the airbag (Full Lotus it looks like) flat bottom floats which would not cushion such a hard arrival and you have the holes being lined up in the Swiss cheese more by design than by accident. I believe the original Full Lotus floats started out on lightweight ultralights and microlights and have evolved into being installed on larger (and heavier) aircraft. I can't see a flat bottom float absorbing much of that impact with the water. Not saying that the engine would not have fallen off with a conventional float but I would like to hope that the impact transferred up to the airframe would have been slightly less with some sort of a Vee bottom float.

[Schooner69A]

About the integrity of the Murphy design: I think it was mentioned in the video that the owner wanted to upgrade the engine; the designer said "No". Owner did it anyway. Engine mount could not handle it...

[Mick G]

About the integrity of the Murphy design: I think it was mentioned in the video that the owner wanted to upgrade the engine; the designer said "No". Owner did it anyway. Engine mount could not handle it...

How do they go about getting certified if against manufacturers recommendation? Experimental category?

[AirFrame]

How do they go about getting certified if against manufacturers recommendation? Experimental category?

No, Amateur-Built category.

[PilotDAR]

[YouTube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdXWMKZpapk[/YouTube]

Similar outcome. Decent landing, 'just selected much too rough water...

[beaverpuq]

Just a nice little Walleye chop there!

[co-joe]

Any landing you can swim away from...?

[jakeandelwood]

That engine just didn't want to quit

[PilotDAR]

Any landing you can swim away from...?

Nope, I'm a poster child for that one not being right!

[pdw]

Idling in flat with zero-flap here ends up in potential to expose to then unavailable spoolup-time for getting back extra/lost bournouli ... than when having out that flap & some additional rpm for slowing approach. Obviously a real sudden drop-away of lift .... wow. (It's not a new thing to experience the futile sink-rate set up like that... by surprise and rather unexpected.)

It's surely a less familiar surrounding for the show demo approach and possibly this same config routine skill is well honed at the home airport, likely already many times (without draggy floats) with never a problem.