Philiip de Ridder

The photos above show Phillip's water rudder mod and air intake detail.

Received from ISPA member Philip de Ridder Tuesday, December 31, 2002:

Hello Brent [& ISPA],

I thought that I should send along a few more flattering pictures of our Seawind. Although I think that our plane should be featured in the section of Piloting and Seawind accidents for a word for the wise, I would like to see a picture of a better day in the Seawind Registry.

Seawind C-GAKA was purchased by myself at Oshkosh in 1990 and at that time we were kit #24. Along the way we were changed to kit #35. I sold half the project to Gabor Balogh of Vancouver, B C in 1996 after Ken Wheeler had helped with our construction to that point. We then imported AKA into Canada from Ken's builder's center in Washington to Pitt Meadows B C.

With a lot of help from professionals, we were able to complete our project in 2000. We test flew in June and after the 25 hours we had a great year flying 85 hours up until the accident in November. Gabor lost control on the Fraser river in a takeoff mishap as a result of incorrect control inputs that caused the porpoise and ditching. The result of which you see in the picture. Gabor attaching a rope to a boat for the ride into the sea plane ramp. We removed the wings and trucked our saturated bird back to our hanger

The main damage was to our canopy, which needed to be replaced, also the nose gear doors and a new bumper. All the radios were removed and sent away along with the flight instruments. Quite a testament to the strength of this aircraft

We were flying again in may of 2001. AKA has traveled to Manteo for the first fly in, in 2000; Baja, Mexico, November 2001; Oshkosh 2002; and just returned from Baja, Mexico November of 2002. We are having a blast with our Seawind which now has 320 hours on the engine/airframe.

We are fortunate to live in Beautiful British Columbia and have endless lakes, rivers and oceans to play on. We have travel plans for Mexico, Alaska, Las Vegas, and Ontario in 2003, and with any luck the next Seawind Fly In. We have made a few changes to our plane along the way and will share them with you at a later date.

Regards,

Philip de Ridder