Taxi Lessons

We worked on two techniques for traversing a lake. One is the step-taxi, where one travels across the lake at fairly high speeds. Get the plane up on the step, pull the power back to, say, 2200 RPM so it doesn't start flying, and cover ground fast. Turns are possible - a little rudder pressure will start the plane turning. For practice, we step-taxied around a fairly large island at the end of Rangeley lake. Keep the ailerons turned into the wind, as the centripital force will induce the plane to tilt toward the outside of the turn so keep the ailerons turned into the wind (particularly if the wind is coming from the inside of turn) to counter-act the leaning tendancy.

The other is a turning technique - basically a way to encourage the plane to turn downwind if all the plane wants to do is weathervane into the wind. This is the plow-turn, which is initiated by turning the plane to the right at idle power and then applying power while shoving the left pedal down (water rudders are down) and using the engine torque (P-factor) as well as the rudders to force the plane around. That's a useful technique for some situations.