Flying boat pilots complete test at Lake Mead

Albatross owners renew licenses with exams to sharpen skills at Boulder City Airport

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"The game plan is to takeoff and go back east-northeast, go through the Valley of Fire to the airport at Echo Bay, then north of Temple Bar, and then into Big Sandy and do water work," Dennis Buehn, a Carson City flight examiner, said loudly over a set of earphones to his pilot.

"We'll do our water work there and at the Narrows. This is going to be a fun ride."

Every year, the millions of visitors who come to Lake Mead -- it's the fifth most visited national recreation site in the country, tallying almost twice as many as those who visit the Grand Canyon -- see it from the ground.

Millions more view it during the day on approach to McCarran International Airport or while cruising to other destinations at altitudes of 24,000 feet and above.

But each year, a lucky few get to land and take off from the lake's surface while getting tested for recertification to Federal Aviation Administration standards so they can keep their Grumman Albatross flying skills current.

The incomparable opportunity to land and fly close to the water and scan almost the entire 1.4-plus million acres of the desolate national recreation area from less than 1,000 feet up -- all within minutes in a flying boat the U.S. Coast Guard affectionately calls "the Goat" -- is like no other.

These twin-radial-engine seaplanes can be seen -- and sometimes heard -- departing and landing at Boulder City Airport in January and February as part of a national fly-in of Albatross owner-pilots.

According to Boulder City Airport Coordinator Mike Minshall, this is the 14th year the fly-ins have been held at the airport because of great weather during the wintertime and the availability of a large body of water nearby.

On Feb. 3, Buehn took Dr. Steve Ritland of Flagstaff, Ariz., and Peter Sherwin of St. Louis, Mo., to Sandy Point in Lake Mead's Gregg Basin and then on to Temple Basin on the return leg for a series of takeoffs and landings, touch-and-gos, S-curve and Figure 8 surface maneuvers so they could pass their annual examinations.

"There certainly are more dials and levers in the cockpit," said Sherwin, a 74-year-old retired pilot for the former TWA Airlines.

He flew the company's giant Constellation airplanes during his 35-year career. "But then again, an airplane is an airplane is an airplane."

But make no mistake about it, this is no ordinary airplane.

The Grumman Albatross Sherwin and Ritland piloted is, according to Buehn, "a '50s vintage" aircraft that saw action during the Korean and Vietnam wars as an air-sea rescue plane.

It has a wingspan of 96 feet, stretches almost 63 feet from nose to tail, stands nearly 26 feet tall on the ramp and holds 1,675 gallons of fuel that's consumed at 85 gallons an hour in the two 1,400-horsepower Curtiss-Wright engines.

Motorists paying upward of $50 to top off their tanks should feel lucky because with 100-octane aviation fuel priced at $3.42 a gallon, an Albatross owner, by comparison, needs even deeper pockets to pay the more than $5,700 it costs to fill up the tanks.

The aircraft, with a cruising speed of 150 miles per hour, has a range of about 2,800 miles. It made routine one-way flights from Oakland, Calif., to Honolulu following World War II, but soon became obsolete with the introduction of jet aircraft.

The plane has no fancy entryway; passengers climb a six-rung ladder at the rear of the plane and enter through two half-doors, which allow the upper half to be opened while the rest sits in the water.

The seaplane is capable of carrying 10 passengers, but on Feb. 3 it carried Buehn and the pilots and six other passengers.

"We know Dennis and we're just enthusiasts along for the ride," said Roger Meadows. "Besides, we like the smell of the gases and the smell of the Albatross."

After flying to the Echo Bay area, Sherwin gently banked the plane right to fly down the lake's Overton Arm over Ramshead, Gull and Heron Islands and on past the mesa country of the South Virgin Mountains to the east just inside the Arizona border.

"That sunken B-29 is around here somewhere," Buehn said over the intercom about seven minutes before reaching the basins at the mouth of the Colorado River. "It's a very calm day at Big Sandy. I got you at 150 (feet) and we'll hold at that altitude. It's perfect, no boat factors."

Sherwin took off and landed five times, circling Sandy Island each time until taking off for Temple Basin and giving Ritland a chance to jump in the pilot's seat and land in slightly choppy waters off Temple Bar.

Minutes later to the west, Ritland simulated a right engine failure landing in Virgin Basin a short hop to the west.

The day was clear, which gave passengers an opportunity to see the back-country rock formations from the air, the river-to-lake transition zone above Sandy Island where the Colorado empties into the green depths of Lake Mead, Fortification Hill and its red sandstone gullies, Hoover Dam from the east, the slender Colorado River looking downstream as it threads its way through Black Canyon and a distant body of water that could only be Lake Mohave.

Ritland swung the plane around and headed the craft west for another 180-degree turn and an easterly headwind approach onto Runway 9 Right.

"I grew up on Catalina Island and have been flying since I was a teenager," he said.

"My dad was the chief of police there and I worked on one of these when I was a baggage boy on Catalina Channel Airlines. We've got eight to 10 of these up in Carson City now. This one we call 41 Sugar."