Pilot's Dream! DHC-2 Beaver: Left Seat Checkout - Why I went to Alaska!

this has been two years in the making yeah all cameras are rolling all right rock and roll let's fly a beaver okay so this will be the beaver briefing this is the big one i think this is why you came here the dhc2 left seat checkout was the culmination of alaska float training this is definitely a dream man flying a beaver we've got a lot to cover so let's get into it [Music] this is going to be a nerdy deep dive into the process of learning to fly a canadian legend today's graduation ride so we're going to be headed out to rainy pass lodge after all was said and done i think i logged about 12 hours in the left seat flying with martin this episode will cover the first hour it was amazing how intuitively this thing flew what's your impression so far love it it's not really too intimidating everything is light on the controls predictable nice harmony probably you're going to wonder why we didn't start in the beaver because in some aspect it's going to be a lot easier than flying the other airplanes i think you're right though this thing is kind of easier to fly than the pa-12 there are several episodes from this series already published flying with martin he represents apex alaska the goal is to offer more than just a basic five-hour float rating that you hang on your wall and i'm really happy to help these guys promote this project anyway let's get rid of the music so we can listen to the awesome sound of the engine [Music] i love the sound of this thing man you're never gonna get tired of that song oh it's a good song a good pregnant witness song the beaver obviously it was made by your wonderful country but uh we'd like to refer to around here as the as a big cub it carries a lot simple systems and that is why we're probably just going to be talking about two systems the fuel and the flaps because that's the major uh differences compared to the cub obviously many of you said well there's a lot more it's 48 feet wide 32 feet long you got to see on some of the landings we did on this aircraft on the first one second one i think you said you turn around like holy cow at the end of the day you might have been even shorter than the pa-12 and i could guarantee you some of the take-offs are actually shorter pa-12 this is an amazing amazing amazing machine you know there's some pilots out there that say wherever a cub goes i'll take a beaver so let's talk about the fuel it's got uh three or five different tanks depending on how you want to do it so this is very critical because uh obviously this airplane has three separate tanks and actually four and fives decal the wing tips the best way to stay out of trouble is make sure we're pointing where the fuel selector is the red handle and what tank we're actually gonna feed from and this is a big gotchu is the fuel selector matching the fuel selector to the proper fuel tank but there's a little language uh logic uh issue with a fuel selector that's something that we'll show in the airplane we have the front which could make sense and then we have the rear which in my case does not make sense because the next one that's caught is called the middle so this is where a massive confusion can happen if you don't pause every time you're dealing with your fuel selection and then add to worse is the middle gauge refers to the center on the fuel selector so again we have a front front rear is actually all the way there with that white tip of the arrow and then middle which is on the bottom right is there proper fuel burn we like to go from the rear to the front move the cg the only caveat it has if we're killing wingtap wing tank fuel which we might be carrying here in the next few days that feeds only in a ford tank and we always want to get to tanks that are further away sooner just to make sure they're available when we do need them so in this case we'll be feeding from the front tank getting this down to probably half maybe around 8 to 12 gallons and then using the fuel selector above your head we will feed the tank it's gravity fed so we have a choice between off draining the right tank into the front tank or draining the left tank into the front tank in case we have to balance and then the top one which is up there behind the handle is both and we will do that twice because if you remember the wingtip tanks are actually larger than the quantity in the front tank so if you leave that handle on after the front tank fills out everything else goes overboard and we don't really want to do that all the fuel tanks except the wing tips are under the fuselage which uh brings a great advantage when refueling an airplane as you notice climbing on a ladder with our cubs so you don't have to climb on the wing no everything is here the only thing we have to climb on the wing are for the wing tanks uh the wingtip tanks located uh on the other side but uh we have a front center in the rear tank right from here and each tank is located along goes along the belly of the fuselage right on the underfloor so it makes it very simple unlike our cup where you can notice being heavy on one wing or the other this is all on the center of the aircraft some beavers are equipped with an electric fuel pump as a backup to the engine driven fuel pump our aircraft is equipped with a wobble pump actually requires a little bit of muscle to pressurize the fuel and take the fuel and pump it all the way up there moving that handle just barely so that's one of the first steps we're gonna do how many shots four good shots and you tell me if you got a four good shot looks like that might have been your first good one from there it is tap to go to the primer just like on your t6 so once we have the lines pressurized we'll go ahead and give it four to five shots of primer okay one more good one i think is all we need and we can't over pressurize because uh you'll damage the seal so it's we want to be right around five psi and down and lock and that's critical because that's gonna be a bad day all clear and one hand on the start you're gonna run it four or five times then you're gonna hit the contact yeah and then you're gonna let it together for a little bit and then you let go of everything and then do we have to do anything with the throttle no we're not pumping so thick is back yeah is this the way to do it yeah pretty awkward okay i'm gonna hold starter three blades mags and then like everything and then like goggles when i'm feeling fire yeah well before it fires i'll tell you when to let go here we go let go that's great this way [Music] so now we're making sure [Music] we're waiting for the orchestra to come [Music] alive [Music] bit more power be ready that we might come up we come up now we're waiting for the rest of the horses to come online okay get ready [Music] and now that we know we're staying on board we're going to belt him never know when things need to get in our hearts okay yeah paige gets blown on shore we're almost there now for run-up we could go ahead and do a run-up so we always want to do it in a win all right so we'll just kind of point that off [Music] there you go all the way back now we're gonna go for the back check and hold this back [Music] [Music] clear i love the sound of this thing man okay the next item uh on the differences is the flaps this aircraft really reacts to flaps uh and we're you're gonna see that uh right at the beginning of our operation so it's pretty impressive the flaps are pretty hydraulically and you and i being mr hydraulics so we have a hand pump uh located between the seats and then we have a directional valve with a little trailing edge flap on the on the lever when the lever is up and you start pumping your flaps come up if the lever is all the way down you start pumping the flaps come down so there's actually a warning because it's one of the gotchu's on the beaver is if the flaps are auto up in other words on the way down you want to leave the lever down when you're ready to bring them up you put the lever up and you start pumping the flaps up and the reason uh i've been told by all experienced beaver pilots is right after takeoff obviously the flaps would be down the flap handle would be down should you go and raise your flaps by accident and thinking that you're going to add some flaps and you take them out that airplane will kind of fall out of the sky and we're going to be experiencing that or demoing that portion so it's better at that point to be realizing ooh i'm adding flaps not retracting flaps versus being in the other other scenario so now we're going to go ahead and add our take-off flaps and this is what trick of the train you can see where the l-wands are so we're going to bring the l-rods this way and we're going to match the flap to the other ones are going to be coming down the other thing that happens with the flaps is we have uh l rods duping ailerons you tend to lose elrond effectiveness because in max flaps we have max drooping aileron and if we have any crosswinds uh we lose effectivity of our our air runs and uh probably not a good place to be unless the wind was right on the run on the nose so they do recommend never to use full flaps unless you're absolutely needed more we can start turning our landing lights on i don't like because the rpm is low you made light instruments yeah because we're on a low voltage it's a generator not an alternator so it won't come up well make sure on the front so usually we'll be taking off in the rear but today we're going to drop the front tank so we can test our for our extended flight you put fuel in the wing tanks not yet but we're gonna make room for it i see you got you okay so gas undercarriage we're gonna get rid of the water pedals you can do it now because we're turning into the wind is that correct so the wind's gonna help us turn all right mixture's going rich correct okay middle lakes traffic beaver one before hotel alpha taking off meadow lakes traffic there we go here we go and he's out of the way we're sitting at 36 inches yep just remember it's gonna creep your way there let's stop a little bit let it build up there we go holy crap that's awesome not too much down but enough there you go now start bringing both power back and i'm going to show you keep that nose down keep that nose down and we're going to do this a lot sooner than we just did now there we go and now we're building up air remember well it's 75 now yeah and there you go feel free to trip show me the beaver smile i just yeah that's freaking amazing yeah wow after an airplane this big it just floated it's a big cup i'm gonna bring the mixture just about and i'll be managing that for a little while so all right and then we'll get flaps up or keep in class so now that we have altitude we're gonna do our flap demo so if you made a mistake now you forgot to select the flap selector like now let's just say you bring him now you're going to bring him down you're going to see a difference go ahead you're going to notice oh that's not what i wanted yeah it's pushing yeah okay so now you've moved the lever the other way and now you're going to see what happens what could be bad oh you feel that sink that was one pump yeah feel that second sink yeah so if you did that too close to the ground traffic eleven o'clock neighborhood over to uh what do you wanna do all right so he's he's forming up on us okay go ahead and tell him 2895 for the beaver we flew to a glacier with clint in his 180 in a previous episode let's go to 2000 feet get some airwork they would leave the power where it is yeah we'll get a good good climb we're climbing for two thousand that right i'll just find twenty four two thousand twenty five hundred all right we're spinning for twenty five do you smear work twenty five make it two about 25 is good that's what would be fun i guess if he's with us is he just hanging out just just driving along driving around the water i'll catch up with you guys later roger thank you all right we'll let him go here we go oh that's a secret air shot did you get it oh yeah i just tracked him the whole way all right then he peeled off oh there we go that's awesome at the part where we put our hand across our heart and says oh canada yeah you guys nailed it the jeep of the sky i won't say this is the highest you're gonna go because we're gonna go to denali but uh this is definitely the highest i could go all year by lot the first real world mission after the checkout was a big one because let's face it this is a terrible idea for a weekend warrior floatplane pilot and that's why we did it with local area expert supervision okay so there's our altitude yeah go ahead and bring it back 25 25 26 leave the rpm 17 how about there just leave it just leave it right there be good about 3 000 here go ahead and trim and i'll just let you do what you need to do like you fly every new airplane and i'll do standard turns and what i'd like to show you though is uh after we add uh in a turn just add a quarter push and you just see how well it just sets in when you do some low low ounce jupiter so start a turn and then put the flap in yeah do a few turns but on one of the last terms we're going to insert some flaps there and you're going to see what i was talking about on the ground so i'm just going to do a clearing turn just to see if not that's a very good idea safe to say we're the only ones up here but the day like today in alaska we're not up here this high i mean oh you'd be surprised somebody else yeah high is good we like to go low because that means everybody else is either the same altitude or above us right now it could be anywhere right that's why we tend to like to fly low let's go to look at okay so okay sounds good shout out to my buddy jason miller from the finer points you taught me that regardless of the airplane if you pick a specific point on the cowl aim small and look at where it intersects the horizon you'll always nail your steep turns all right so when i get on that heading i'll just roll into it do anything you want to do just as if you're getting comfortable with a new airplane okay so there's a mountain and we'll reverse it sleeping lady yes we will and it's good on the other side i just needed to do a better job keeping this thing coordinated but i think it's cool how quickly martin noticed well it's philosophical going to the right big motor not as big as the one you flew martin's talking about the t6 harvard which i just learned how to fly and that airplane has the big version of the pratt whitney that the beaver has i did a better job keeping the ball in the middle on this second turn yeah that's nice held the up two pretty nicely yeah once you crack and then there's nothing i could tell you as a pilot you just have to do it and figure out you know what to do yeah and that's why i kind of say just so those are all about maneuvers and there you go uh when you level off it's probably gonna get rid of the trip hands off a lot more rudder required on the right left turn right same thing on the water okay what were you saying about doing some flapping and turn so we'll start so go ahead and start uh your turn you do make sure the flap handle is down and then just start pumping barely down and i want you to see how well it anchors the aircraft go ahead feel it yep this makes it that much stable so just like in the cub when you're starting to maneuver close to the water i always said you know i'll just add that one notch of flaps just gives us an extra margin and this aircraft i'd definitely like to do the same thing but you can see in the turn uh just suddenly it's like it drops uh you know power steering where it just really feels nice and you can roll on the other way and then obviously you can move the flap handle up to direct the flap up and then take it away and see what it does really a flat airplane you see that yep that was flat so what we want to make sure is after takeoff sometimes in a direct takeoff you might decide you need more flaps that's why we like to have the flat handle where it belongs which is down because during your day by taking flaps out too soon and you don't have to move that handle as opposed to adding flaps and go oh i meant to retract them so that is why when the flaps are down we want the handle down and then when we raise the handle up and bring the flaps up we want to leave the handle up all right cool good we want to do some slow flying yeah let's do some slow flight do some slow flight clean pops what do we want to be at for slow flight just just wherever you want to go and then you're doing a clean down if you want to start adding flaps when you get there just to see how well it reacts i'm just going to let you get comfortable with the airplane probably 50 or so it's pretty mushy now pretty much right yeah okay so do me a favor start adding some flaps and just see what happens like we dropped an anchor very stable yeah good barely have any flaps crossing traffic in front of us i'll get it ready to landing flaps why not i would go yeah just just pass take off the g10 but now you're doing straight and level which we wouldn't do in this attitude but that just gives you an idea bought on the white arc we still have a long ways to go at 50 knots now if you wanted to start pulling the power back to and pushing the nose over we can simulate a final descending on final there you go bring the power back to about 1500 that's about where we'd land about there 1500 on the final it's maintaining this speed 55 55 and then slowing down to 50 wow that's a pitch up and then sometimes we need to bring power back but what i like to do is once i start my flare i like to add to just a few hundred rpms helps keeps the nose up and it keeps all the horses getting ready to go if you need them how stable this is that's amazing we have a very good view of where we're going i'm surprised we're getting hit by gusts up here oh that may happen it's from the mountain right so i feel pretty stable so we'll clean it up and uh yeah so i'd like you to add a little bit of power just clean up on the back side so let's say we retract the flaps by accident so i'm raising your flap direction and i just want you to go ahead and give me a flat handle and just see what would happen accidentally yeah and you can see we're gonna drop like an elevator yeah there it is so yeah yeah you know what happens at that time that's we got the flap handle on the wrong sure okay you can go ahead and recover so put the horses back into work there's a very flat sensitive airplane you wanna go try your luck at landing let's do it that's good so let's do a 180 let's go to redshirt lake [Music] [Applause] part two will cover landings and it might even take a part three to get into all the stuff we did which include confined lakes so huge thanks to tim and martin from apex for inviting me out there and thanks to patreon supporters and sponsors for helping create this content it's a lot of work the patreon supporters actually get a bunch of exclusive stuff because i've had so much material to go through for this project there's currently several raw uncut versions of things such as the beaver cockpit briefing the entire thing and a couple of raw uncut flights as i'm blogging and syncing them it's a great place to share them and i often get good feedback as far as what i should include in the public episodes there's actually about 50 raw exclusive things available to supporters so i'm grateful to the community for helping be a part of this it really is all about you guys what i'm able to do and share so until next time keep your flight chops sharp

Channel: FlightChops

Views: 254,349

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Id: a_jNrTd1f6s

Length: 22min 55sec (1375 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020