Patty Wagstaff Seaplane Course: High-Quality Production, Thorough Rating Prep

We just finished going through every bit of Sporty’s new Seaplane Rating Course with Patty Wagstaff and we think it is the best video course on seaplane ops that we’ve ever reviewed. We’ll go into detail on the course in a moment. As an introduction we’ll report that it is regularly priced at $129, but at press time it was on sale at an introductory price of $99.

Filmed in 4K, it is content rich, paced appropriately and breaks the material into 10 lessons of comfortable length. The longest is just under 16 minutes. Each lesson concludes with a quiz that is graded as you go, with explanations for each of the answers. In Sporty’s tradition, the course is engaging, educational, and produced to an extremely high standard.

Serious Fun Factor—and Study

There are those who insist that seaplane operations are the most enjoyable aeronautical activity in which a pilot can indulge. We won’t disagree. For improving stick and rudder skills and upping one’s understanding of aerodynamics and hydrodynamics, adding on a seaplane rating is so much fun we think that it might be declared illegal in some states.

We’ve been giving seaplane instruction for some 30 years and are always looking for training courses that give the learner not just the knowledge necessary to pass the oral portion of the practical exam but also pass along the “gouge”—the little secrets that help a pilot have a deeper understanding of the water flying world beyond the minimums required by the FARs.

Below the video for each lesson are notes that—to our mind—are of the sort that would be taken by someone who is learning the material and wants to write down information that can be easily understood by an intelligent person when it’s time to review. We also appreciated that there is a full transcript of the narration of each lesson.

The system tracks your progress through the lessons—you can take them in any order—as well as your success on the quizzes. Passing for a quiz is 80%. There is a final review quiz that also requires 80% to pass. Once completed, the student prints out a certificate stating that she or he has completed the course requirements. We’ve got ours.

Purchase of the course gives the buyer lifetime access on any device and will follow your course progress even if you switch devices midstream. The quality of the video and narration is absolutely first rate. Multiple cameras are used to give the viewer an understanding of what the seaplane is doing during all phases of operation. There are several split-screen sequences showing three views of the seaplane during various kinds of takeoffs and landings.

Ten Lessons

The course contains ten lessons: introduction, types of seaplanes and float systems, preflight, taxiing, taking off, landing, securing your seaplane, advanced seaplane operations, seaplane safety, and the Seaplane Pilots Association. Rather than just show the needed information in one kind of seaplane, the course discusses, describes, and shows, in action, flying boats, float-equipped seaplanes and amphibians, single- and twin-engine. It also explains exactly what is required by the FARs to add on a seaplane rating both in light sport and conventional seaplanes.

The eye-popping training videos were filmed in Florida, Maine, and Alaska—there’s even a moose shown in a river in the segment on river operations.

Adventure Flying, Aircraft Differences

As an added incentive to pilots considering a seaplane rating, there is also a section in the course simply called “Adventure Flying,” which contains some eight hours of video of a wide range of airplanes and locations: a de Havilland Beaver, Aircam, Cessna 180, Turbine Super Goose, and Republic Twin Bee in Alaska; a de Havilland Beaver in Florida; and a Grumman Albatross in Wisconsin. In the way cool department, the Albatross departs from EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh and proceeds to local lakes for landings. Each video includes “360 view,” allowing the viewer to rotate the camera view through all directions.

The course includes details on the differences between floatplane and flying boat operation and goes into amphib operations with blunt discussions about the need to correctly position the gear for the surface on which one intends to alight. It doesn’t mince words when it describes the dangers of landing gear-down on water.

The developers of the course had obviously read a lot of seaplane accident reports and passed along significant information that those accident pilots may not have known or had forgotten. For instance, when making a glassy water takeoff, the most important thing to do after coming off the water is to establish and maintain a positive rate of climb because it is absolutely impossible to tell how high you are above the water. A corollary is not to make a turn after takeoff because too many pilots have promptly stuck a wing into the water. That doesn’t end well.

In nearly every lesson we picked up something that we didn’t know, had been overlooked in our training, or was simply a better way of looking at an operation or a technique to make the operation easier or safer. There are good animations to show the inside structure of the watertight compartments in a float, how the system for pumping out those compartments works, and what to do if you don’t get water when you pump the float.

Mounting numerous cameras on a seaplane (and strategic use of cameras on drones) allow a pilot to get a deeper understanding as to the hydrodynamics and aerodynamics of takeoffs and landings as well as advanced techniques for glassy and rough water operation. It even gives objective information as to what size waves are too big to attempt to handle in a floatplane.

Half the Height of the Floats

During all of the years we’ve watched from inside the cabin of a floatplane as the waves move progressively backward as the airplane climbs onto the step and accelerates to break suction—so to speak—from the water, we knew intellectually that the step, a cut out in the bottom portion of the float, just aft of the midpoint, allowed the aircraft to come off of the water and that near the end of the takeoff run, it would be the only portion of the float in the water. We also knew that the step is essential for breaking free of the water, something demonstrated when Dornier built its first gigantic flying boat, the Rs.1—all it could do was taxi fast as it had no step in the hull and was unable to lift off from the water. James Gilbert, in his immortal book The World’s Worst Aircraft, repeated a doggerel chanted by the locals around the factory at Seemos on Lake Constance (where Germany, Switzerland, and Austria come together) about the machine: “Das ist der flying boat from Seemoos/From zer lake it can’t come loose . . .”

In the Sporty’s video, camera placement let us see exactly what is going on with float as the seaplane accelerates and the float begins the plane on the surface of the water, with just the step touching. It also showed that the design of a float is such that if there is an attempt to pull the seaplane off the water at low speed, the rear of the floats—normally above the water’s surface when on the step—will dig into the water, slowing the seaplane.

We also liked the detailed information on and visuals of glassy water landings—especially how to approach very low over a shoreline (where there are no people or houses) to get the best visual reference before setting up the final descent (at 100 FPM, no more than 150 FPM) to the water. It emphasized the danger of glassy water and that great caution must be used in taking off or landing under such conditions.

Review, Production

Because we picked up things that were new or that had faded from our mind over the years, we strongly recommend the course for any seaplane pilot as an excellent review platform. Even if a pilot’s layoff from water flying was only from late fall to early spring, we think spending a few hours reviewing the lessons will pay big dividends for that pilot in terms of safety and pure enjoyment once back in a seaplane.

We spent some time talking with Patty Wagstaff about putting together the video. She wrote the script incorporating her experience with seaplanes, but she also reached out to experienced, far north Canadian seaplane pilots Peter Kay and David Ross for advanced techniques used in the bush and on rivers.

Wagstaff praised the team lead by Bret Koebbe, who oversees video production and pilot training course teams at Sporty’s. She described several 14-hour days filming during the long summer days in Alaska as they got dramatic shots in striking scenery.

As we talked about the little things that were included in the course, Patty commented that her intention was to “take people into the inner circle of seaplane flying and then lift the curtain.” We liked that description—and especially what she said next: “The whole point is to have fun.”

We think the course meets its goals and that anyone going for a seaplane rating who uses it will have everything necessary to pass the oral on the checkride except for details of the systems and speeds of the seaplane that person is going to use. It’s as complete as can be.