All the edges

Small beginnings

Charles Weldon, founder of WaterWings, started flying at 16 just a few miles to the north at Bessemer Airport (EKY).

“Got my license and then I got busy with life and jobs and wives and all of that jibble,” he says. When he got back into it about 30 years ago, he returned to his childhood fascination with floatplanes.

“I grew up on Lake Martin, playing just down there and my dad and I would play golf and there was a seaplane,” he says. “I thought that was the coolest thing ever.”

He bought that seaplane, a Cessna 150 on straight floats, and started WaterWings about 25 years ago off his own dock on the lake. The company still has that 150, but now it is on wheels, and Weldon understandably suspects it’ll stay like that, although he does have plans to build a hangar at the dock soon to allow for water-only training again.

After the 150, he added a Piper PA–30 Twin Comanche for winter flying, and the fleet grew from there, even at one point including a pair of Grumman Widgeons while they sorted out letters of deviation authority for the AirCams.

“Turned out we had an option to add a Husky and that was so much better. And the 150 is an awesome little airplane but the Husky is much more powerful,” he says.

“The A–1C is an awesome floatplane. They’re very, very reliable. These floats are very tough…. You obviously have to be careful with them, but in general, they haven’t given us much trouble at all,” he says. “And the Huskys are awesome short-field airplanes. They don’t have any real bad habits. They get up and out of the water quickly and have a nice weight and balance envelope to play in.”

Water dog

Shelby County Airport is busy when we arrive on a chilly fall afternoon. A Fairchild PT–19, Cessna Bird Dog, and Cessna 172 all make approaches to the single runway surface as we roll up to WaterWings’ main hangar. It’s cookout day, a Tuesday tradition, and both students and airport locals converge here for lunch. Weldon is finishing up a checkride, and we watch the helicopter, AirCam, and Super Petrel all come in and out on different lessons. Mechanic Jake Fellmeth, with a good-natured and calm demeanor for a man managing maintenance on such a diverse fleet, works on one of the AirCams while his Australian shepherd, Scout, tussles with Weldon’s yellow lab puppy, Wilbur. Life in rural Alabama has a more flexible relationship with time than one typically finds in urban centers, and no one is in a hurry.

CFIs Rachel Contorno and Mia Penton get the Huskys ready for a jaunt to the lake. I’ll fly with Contorno in the A–1C. She and her husband, Zac, both instruct for WaterWings, although Zac, who met Weldon as a teen, instructs less now as he is also a full-time corporate pilot. Penton will join us in the other Husky, an A–1B, for fun. Both Penton and Contorno work here part-time and are not the hurried time-builder CFI types, especially since at the airport, this seemingly is the place to be.

“I was a Part 61 instructor down on the other end of the airport,” says Penton. “And I would taxi by here every single day. And I was like, man, I wish I worked here. It just seemed like such an exclusive group. And then I eventually worked my way up to be like, I’m just going to go get my seaplane rating. And then I got a job here shortly after, and it’s been amazing. I don’t want to rush this part of my life. I’m really enjoying working here. It is more than time building for sure.”

Soon, it’s time to start up and head toward the water. Most of the waterways here are dammed rivers masquerading as lakes and located just a short flight away from Calera. The best and closest place to practice is an area to the east the pilots call the Narrows, so after we take off, we head there.

Even with two of us and fuel, the Husky is eager to get off the ground. With a significantly roomier cabin than a Piper PA–18 Super Cub, I like the feeling of getting to stretch out a little more than normal. The cool air helps the performance, and the Husky enjoys showing us what it can do. It doesn’t fly that differently from a Super Cub, but that extra power and space make a difference, and it is certainly a more comfortable airplane for us taller folks on longer days.

The clouds above us are cooking, and we keep it low, as all seaplanes truly should be, while we contour a river to the practice area. The leaves are just starting to change, and the sea of trees beneath is interrupted only by the waterways that make this a seaplane town. We head over to a local public dock to practice a semi-confined landing and, as it turns out, semi-choppy water ops. Penton beats us there and has already taxied the other Husky up the ramp and into the parking lot, and it looks so out of place I can’t help but laugh.

The Husky’s responsive on the power and drops like a rock when you need it to, and we approach over some trees after a survey loop. The confined approach is a commercial maneuver and is a kind of chop-and-drop of careful energy management used to land at smaller waterways. I’m a tad late on adding that power back in to smooth down the touchdown, but these Wipline floats are like training wheels, and cope with my imperfect landing just fine. The wind’s picking up, and I leave the docking to the expert hands of Contorno, who guides us in smoothly before Penton catches a wing and ties us down. For the first time ever, I actually must walk across the cross-over cable between the bows of the floats to reach land. I feel like a real seaplane pilot while we meet up with the crew on the dock.

While there is plenty of room to practice, this general area is called the Narrows for a reason, and with the wind picking up and no good nearby options, we call it a day and head home. Narrower waterways like this mean you really need the wind to cooperate. Crosswind landings in seaplanes are, in my experience, simply not enjoyable, and we don’t need to push it.

With some small waves now forming, we do an on-the-roll runup, turn at the end of the lake, and head home. The Husky once again leaps into the air, the waves helping reduce the water drag, and we peace out back to Shelby County.

Think different

The next morning it’s time to try something a little different—the AirCam on amphibs. While I have my multiengine rating and occasionally fly with a friend in her Diamond DA62, my multiengine time is limited, and my AirCam time is zero. As I will soon learn, it will take some serious flying against my instincts to land this airplane as it is meant to be landed.

Everything about this airplane is just a little odd for first-timers. First, to get in, you have to climb on the relatively fragile-looking floats, carefully climb into the front seat, and lower the canopy. The visibility is already incredible, barely anything airplane-like in my periphery. Then we start up the pusher pair of Rotax 912 ULS. CFI Michael Gerhardt is a doctor and instructs on the side, for fun, which once again proves what a neat community they’ve built here.

We start our taxi. The airplane feels so light as to be almost flimsy. Runup complete, we take off, and it is as strange as I expected, and had been warned about times before. It feels like we’re in Wonka’s glass elevator, not an airplane, as we climb rapidly and smoothly out of Calera. It’s delightful.

On the way to the Narrows, we practice airwork. The drag is strange, and the aileron input required is atypical compared to what I’m used to. It’s hard to determine our attitude just by looking outside because there is so much more visibility than normal. But up here in the air, there’s time to peek down at the instruments and confirm our attitude. Satisfied that I have at least the basics, Gerhardt directs us to the water, and the real challenge begins.

We set up for a landing (today’s calm, thank goodness), and I work on holding the correct pitch.

“The way you set that up is to land at 53 in this airplane. OK. That’s perfect. But anything between 48 and 55 or 56 is totally acceptable,” he says. The approach angle and airspeed locked in, things get trickier once we’re in ground effect. We look completely flat. This can’t be right, can it? Land too flat in a seaplane and you risk digging in the front floats and flipping…this landing attitude feels wrong, but I trust Gerhardt. But even with his voice in my ears, my flying instincts win this round. With nearly no visual references for this, my first AirCam landing, I’m just not sure what we’re looking for, and I aim for what I know—a slight nose-up attitude for a smooth water landing.

When I come back on the stick to land, despite him telling me not to, he has to stop it.

“That’s a normal reaction,” he says. “Everybody does it.”

“What’s critical here is the float water angle, because you want to touch down on the first two to three feet above the front of the step,” he says. “So, to ensure that you touch down there, it means it’s got to be at a certain angle to the water. If you are too nose high, you’re going to land on the back of the floats. If you are too nose low, you’re going to land on the front of the floats, and that’s really dangerous. So, you want to land on the step basically.”

Understanding the why behind the what helps, and we use the longest part of the lake to practice a series of splash and goes. After about a dozen, I finally start to get the hang of it. It feels like pushing forward to land, but it’s actually just holding a certain amount of back-pressure and adding a smidge of power to smooth it out.

On the way back, in a classic student pilot blunder, I take my hand off the throttles. Gerhardt warned me on the way out about what would come next. Naturally, an engine “fails.” Full opposite rudder on instinct keeps us straight ahead, and the AirCam, designed to be fine with one engine, shows us what a capable airplane it is. We have no trouble staying level and maneuvering. He gives me the engine back, we land back at the airport, and I’m thrilled to have logged my first multiengine sea time.

All the edges

Weldon knows Alabama isn’t the first place to come to mind when one thinks of seaplanes.

“A lot of people think Alabama is a very flat state,” he says. “But we do have some hills and things. It’s not flat like everybody thinks. We’re at the bottom of the Appalachians. And we’ve got really pretty lakes in Alabama. There’s lots of them. Most of them are open, which is very fortunate.”

He’s not sure what the next thing they’ll add to their cool fleet is, but he’s excited about the changing rules under MOSAIC and that most of these airplanes will now qualify to be flown by sport pilots. While they do some normal training, Weldon enjoys and will stay in this specialized place.

“We do all the edges. So, the great thing about aviation is you just keep learning, and that’s the fun thing about it. There’s always something new.”

What’s next, an airship? A balloon? Weldon says he doesn’t know if they have the hangar space for that, but he doesn’t say no. We’ll have to wait and see.

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