Jacko wrote:
method of mitigating this risk is to keep your main wheels firmly on the water
Well, speaking as a pilot who was ejected through the windshield during a training water landing in an amphibian (with the wheels properly retracted), and spent three months in hospital, I can’t think of a less wise thing to do with a wheel plane then to deliberately bring the wheels into contact with the water!
The fact that something could be possible in a plane does not make it wise.
PilotDAR, my suggestion was ever so slightly slightly tongue in cheek, but seriously, even if you have by your own admission no practical experience of water landings with bushwheels, any DAR should at least be able to understand the theory.
While site inspection and approach techniques are similar, all similarity between landing with floats and bushwheels disappears once you touch the surface. Floats need to be kept rather straight, whereas bushwheels tolerate subtantial yaw or side-slip. This, and other characteristics of a hydroplaning pneumatic tire as determined half a century ago by NASA, make water landings with a wheeled bushplane infinitely harder to screw up than on floats. The main thing to remember is not to close the throttle after touch-down and to keep your ground speed above the calculated minimum hydroplaning speed for your tire pressure.
Jacko, I have never landed an aircraft on its wheels, on the water, as I consider the risk to far exceed any benefit. I do understand the principles well, and I have taken off two C 185 wheel planes from ice and then standing water, where the destruction of the aircraft was likely had I not moved them. Aside from my personal safety, it was worth the risk to the aircraft. I know it works, I just don’t like the cavalier approach to risk performing maneuvers which are well outside the intended or necessary operation for the aircraft. As video becomes more available, impressionable pilots see things being done in aircraft which are not intended. Worse, those impressionable pilots may try this stuff without proper training and safety preparation. An aircraft being waterskied is out of gliding distance from shore, are life jackets aboard (it’s a requirement)? Are the occupants wearing them? Have the occupants have underwater egress training? Such maneuvers are outside normal operations, are the occupants wearing helmets?
I guess, on topic, the best thing one can say about waterskiing a wheel plane, is that there won’t be a fire!
No one ever thinks it’ll happen to them. I didn’t a year ago, though I still wore a life jacket, and had current underwater egress training. I would have drowned without the lifejacket. The egress training was moot, as I was ejected, tearing out the seatbelt an some attaching airframe as I went. 20 broken bones, including a broken back, and permanent nerve injury, with 95 days in hospital, and I have a different view about flying – I can! So I’m cautious and conservative. When I returned to flying, after some dual, my next thing was to practice emergencies to refresh my skills. I did 15 hours of solo before taking my first passenger. I’m glad to be flying at all, so believe me, I encourage training and practicing for emergencies (hence commenting on the original topic), I have become a dissenter of pointless risk taking, and I’m not afraid to say so. Can’t we just be proponents for normal safe flying, with appropriate risk aversion?
I was in Cannes recently and noticed a formation of small yellow SEPs (too distant to figure out what they were) flying lower and lower over the sea. To my amazement, each one touched down on the water very neatly and took off again, with a plume of water falling behind and below it. I assume it must be have been some kind of military exercise but the ease in which it was done was extraordinary – and baffling. Not just a one-off emergency procedure, but three perfectly executed touch and go’s on water in a simple aircraft. Any ideas?
Are you sure you had your glasses on and didn’t mistake them for Canadairs 
?
Ha, maybe, but I’m certain there was only one prop – not the high twin props you see on those planes? That would have made more sense.
Pilot_DAR wrote:
I have become a dissenter of pointless risk taking, and I’m not afraid to say so.
Quite so, but whereas perception of what is “pointless” is subjective, particularly in the context of off-airport operations, assessment of risk ought to be less so.
Floatplane FSI accidents are two a penny in the NTSB database, yet some heroes are willing to land on floats with a student pilot manipulating the controls – perhaps believing that they are better (or luckier) than the hundreds of experienced pilots and instructors who have already trodden that path to fatal or serious injury.
By contrast, the US database contains only one “water-skiing” accident, in which the (possibly well-lubricated) unlicensed “pilot” suffered no significant injury.
Well, actually, there was one other – in which some dope put his parking brake on for some water-skiing, and subsequently forgot to release it prior to landing at home. But then, what do you expect from a Husky driver? 
Aha, that must have been it. You can see how the floats could almost be mistaken for landing gear at a distance and a certain angle. Thank you RobertL18C!
There are likely to be far more student landings on floats than pilots waterskiing on wheels, so the difference in accidents is not surprising.
