The Kodiac 100 by SWS flys great but I have not been able to land the amphibean version in water. On approach, with full flaps and a speed a little above stall speed, it still bounces severely after it hits the water. After 2 or 3 bounces it finally crashes into the water. I have landed other amphibeans successfuly- Cessna 172, DC6. Has anyone had success with this plane?.
If you are landing too slowly you will have a very nose high attitude, causing the floats to dip into the water at the back, then you nose crashes down.
I always try to land a little faster so that the floats have a flatter aspect in relation to the water. Keep the power in until just as the floats touch the water.
Thanks for the replies. Searching YouTube I discovered that pulling all the way back on the yoke to maintain a nose up attitude right before landing solves the intense bouncing and I can now land safely in water.
HOWEVER- I have a HUGE gripe with the landing gear warning system. It will say, repeatedly “Gear up for Water landing” or Gear down for runway landing". It never stops once started and is annoying as Hell.. Is their a way to permanently disable this audio? (I know it is there for a safety reason but after 1 message I get the picture!)
Don’t have that particular aircraft, but most amphibs have a “silence” button next to/near the gear selector and indicator lights.
Regards
I don’t think it is specific to the Kodiak but also applies to 1st part seaplane aircraft.
See that report: Unrealistic Water Physics for Float Planes
Another related topic: Water Physics/Depth Change?
Yes, there is an unmarked little square next to the landing gear lever that silences it, but only temporarily. It comes back. This is so annoying that it makes me hesitant to fly what is otherwise a great plane. I would think, by altering somewhere in a config file, there would be a way to disable it, or a wav file to delete.
Hoping someone knows how.
The SWS website/support is no help.
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I think the warning may be triggered by the normal Gear Warn event that is included in many land planes too. It can be triggered by low airspeed, low throttle, or a combination of the two. I even get it in the Diamonds I fly when I want to do a steep descent by pointing the nose down and pulling back the power. Any reset of the warning would itself be reset if the conditions that set off the alarm were no longer met. In other words, you pull back the throttle to get below some clouds and silence the warning, then raise the throttle back to cruise. Pull the throttle back for approach and you’ll get the warning again.
That makes sense but that’s not what is happening with this plane and occasionally with others. A warning is fine. Unending warnings are not. I’ve even been on the runway after landing and had the warning continue saying “gear down for runway Landing.”
Yeah, I doubt that’s supposed to happen. I quit flying the Kodiak a while back when I started getting a mystery alarm dinging away for no apparent reason. Every indicator on the screen was in the green, so I couldn’t find any reason for the alert.
I don’t remember if the Kodiak has a trim alarm like the Porter does, but it could have been that if it does.
If the inertial separator was off and you had selected de-icing, you will get an alert, or if you’re above 10000 feet and you haven’t turned Pitot heat on, you’ll get an alarm.
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I run pitot heat as a practice, but not deicing. The problem is that when the alarm starts ding-ding-dinging, there’s nothing on the EICAS, and none of the indicators on the MFD are out of range.