August 2, 1998 Sea(Plane Base) of Tranquility

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by	Rick Durden

About the Author ... Rick Durden is a practicing aviation attorney who holds an ATP Certificate, with a type rating in the Cessna Citation, and Commercial privileges for gliders, free balloons and single-engine seaplanes. He is also an instrument and multi-engine flight instructor. Rick started flying when he was fifteen and became a flight instructor during his freshman year of college. He did a little of everything in aviation to help pay for college and law school including flight instruction, aerial application, and hauling freight. In the process of trying to fly every old and interesting airplane he could, Rick has accumulated over 5,400 hours of flying time. In his law practice, Rick regularly represents pilots, fixed base operators, overhaulers, and manufacturers. Prior to starting his private practice, he was an attorney for Cessna in Wichita for seven years. He is a regular contributor to Aviation Consumer and AOPA Pilot and teaches aerobatics in a 7KCAB Citabria in his spare time. Rick makes it clear he is part owner of a corporation which owns a Piper Aztec — because, having flown virtually every type of piston-engine airplane Cessna manufactured from 1933 on, as well as all the turboprops and some of the jets, he cannot bring himself to admit to actually owning a Piper.

There is a reasonably well-known annex to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh which relatively few people take the time to visit. The seaplane base. As a result, it is a refuge, a place of sanity away from the frenetic pace of the main venue on Wittman Regional Airport. Even the approach for someone coming by bus or car from the main part of the event is pleasant, it is a stroll down a wooded lane.

Here a few dozen seaplanes have circled the bay in Lake Winnebago, then lined up with the wind, hushed down final and slid onto the water, then taxied to the small, triangular inlet where the others of their kind are moored. Depending on the congestion at the docks, the arrival can either taxi in or be met by one of the small boats used as launches and towed in.

Once at the dock, the airplane is unloaded by helpful volunteers and all baggage placed in a large, wheeled cart for transport to either the forested camping area or a vehicle. When the airplane is unloaded, it is towed to a mooring where it joins a mixed collection of gently bobbing seaplanes and flying boats.

The pace is relaxed. The number of airplanes is large for a collection of seaplanes, but paltry when compared to the main convention. That means there is time to savor every takeoff, every pattern and landing. The grassy areas around the inlet have also been planted with numerous flower boxes, adding to the civilized atmosphere. Those standing around the flower boxes and on the shoreline watch every airplane movement, for there is usually time between aircraft moving, time to contemplate that last takeoff in by the Lake Amphibian which started to porpoise but was saved by the pilot; to think about how graceful the Grumman Widgeon was on approach and touchdown. Aircraft taxi at nearly idle power, for that is the way seaplanes move around without overheating the engine, so there is time to frame that photograph, to enjoy the brilliant paint job on the Cessna 185, to gaze at the Fleet biplane on floats which has seen so very many summers.

Signs note the time and place for a fish fry and a corn roast are posted all over. People saunter to better vantage points to look, to take pictures. There is a Rogollo wing ultralight, on floats, pulled up on the beach. It elicits many second looks and expressions of wonderment that it could get off the water. Few of the onlookers were alive when Aeronca and Piper were building airplanes of comparable horsepower in the 1930s and putting them on floats as well.

The homebuilt group is well-represented, for, after all, this is the EAA. It is fascinating to see that the lines of some of the homebuilts are enhanced by the addition of floats. Even more grace is added.

People talk to each other as they stand near the shore and watch a PA-12 set up for its landing in somewhat choppy water. They do rate and evaluate the performance of the pilots, but that is the birth-right of every pilot, everywhere. Still, the comments are not harsh. There is collective admiration for the handling of the Cessna 170 as it makes a final turn into the wind and touches down, a bit of awe as the taxiing 185 cuts it engine and just loses headway as it gently touches the dock. There is a collective gasp as the Lake begins to porpoise, lifts prematurely off the water, splashes back down and the nose starts up again. The horrible feeling that disaster is about to be witnessed goes away as the pilot tames the airplane, rises into the air and beings a slow climb. Conversations restart and people move casually to another vantage point for the next act in the relaxed ballet, each wishing that he or she could have flown in here among the trees and serenity.