Student Magazine Articles
 
We're always humbled when our students write about their experiences with Alaska Float Ratings in Moose Pass. Here's several. All of the pieces are about the students' experiences and why they felt it was worth spending their time, money, and energy earning their float rating with us. If your time is limited in perusing this website, I think Barbara's article, Going for Water Wings, gives you an idea of what it is like flying one our super cubs in the rugged, yet beautiful Chugach National Forest, the second largest in the United States, and  Alaska. Here's the articles.
Read and enjoy,
Vern 
 
Going for Water Wings
 
By Barbara Rowell
Plane and Pilot, January 1994 (printed with permission)
 
"Okay, Barbara, enough of that. We're heading for a tiny lake wher you have no choice but to put it down on the spot.," Vern said sternly. 
 
I felt embarrassed-I had overshot my landing twice. I found it difficult to land short on a large body of water wher there were so many choices. I was accustomed to being restricted to runways, targeting my wheels to touch down close to the numbers. Vern Kingsford sat behind me in his meticulously restored Super Cub, instructing me on my second floatplane lesson in two days. I was still overwhelmed by the added dimension of being able to touch down almost anywher on water. 
 
"I don't really need a float rating," I told him when he first proposed it. "But I would like to get bush-flying experience in Alaska, especially short-field landings with real obstacles."  
 
"There's no place else in the world to get the kind of training you'd get flying on floats that compares to the course I give in my own backyard, Vern said emphatically. "Right wher I live in Moose Pass, Alaska, is as spectacular a mountain setting as you'll find anywher."  
 

Adding a Seaplane Rating
 
By David Wimer
Backcountrypilot.org
My Experience 
 
I am a low time (250 hrs.) private pilot. When I completed my private in 1997 I planned on taking the usual route of adding additional ratings/privileges. Instrument-Commercial-Multi, were all things I viewed as being on the horizon. I got started, as was many hours into my training. Then life struck. Change in employment, Change in marital status, a long distance move. These were all things that forced my flying onto the back-burner.
 
When the stars realigned and I had the time, opportunity, (and of course money) to get back “into” flying, several years had passed. A couple of false starts, and finally back to flying with something close to regularity happened in the fall of 2003. 
 
I still wanted to complete my instrument and commercial instruction, but I wasn’t ready to dive back into that quite yet. Being a big history buff, as well as a fan of anything nautical, I started looking at the seaplane rating as something “fun” to do, while exposing me to a different side of aviation, and hopefully “sharpening” my skills as a pilot. 
 
I began to research, and initially started looking at those locations closest to me here in the Los Angeles area. This meant most likely Lake Havasu/Colorado River, or a couple of locations farther north in California.  I made the decision that if I was going to learn to fly floats; I wanted to do it wher float flying was a way of life, “the real deal” so to speak. That meant either Washington State, or Alaska.  I must admit I also had the “Walter Mitty” syndrome, and wanted to see what being a “Bush Pilot” was about. I chose Alaska.