Big lake, increasing radius...wish there was a video.


"karl gruber" wrote in message
...
|I gave Harmon Leonard a BFR about 20 years ago. He is long
gone now but
| fancied himself quite an opera star.
|
| He owned a big freight company here in Seattle and was
mostly retired. Bob
| Gardner will vouch for the fact that Harmon flew for about
30 minutes every
| day and his REPUBLIC TWIN SEABEE was a common sight in the
sky around Boeing
| Field.
|
| http://tinyurl.com/h4jrs
|
| We had done some landings in Lake Washington and the STOL
Twin Bee is really
| a terrific short field airplane. It has 6 feet of wing
extension and Harmon
| just firewalled one engine from a slow water taxi. The
airplane immediately
| went into a sharp turn but did manage to increase speed
enough to get up on
| the step. It still went around in circles a couple of
times, but finally got
| above Vmcg(w) and old Harmon just milked it off the
| water.................singing Lohengrin or something. It
was a sight and
| sound to behold.
|
| I signed him off regularly because he never killed himself
and nobody else
| would EVER fly with him. He WAS an excellent
stick.............but somewhat
| of a scofflaw.
|
| Karl
| "Curator" N185KG
|
|
|