[ MSFS2020 | VATSIM ] "Bush League" event #57 takes flight in the Icon A5 near Kenora, Ontario!

Once a month, we try to join our friends for a recurring "Bush League Backcountry Fly-In Series", exploring small grass, dirt, and gravel strips that are quite literally "off the beaten path". On a few occasions, this has branched out further into floatplanes / seaplanes -- and until now, I've avoided these (sometimes due to scheduling conflicts and other times due to a simple lack of interest and/or experience). This month's details weren't published until late, although we'd had hints in DownwindSim's Discord that a floatplane trip might be in the cards. I was originally thinking I'd simply tag along by visiting the closest nearby land-based strips available -- until the actual trip details revealed that there really weren't any! Rather than ditch my friends altogether, however, I decided to bite the bullet and do my best to fly along.

This entailed a quick study on an easy-to-fly amphibious aircraft. The good news here was that the Bush League adventures have tended to start an hour after our normal livestream start time. This afforded us a buffer to familiarize ourselves with something before joining the group. We loaded into Kenora, Ontario (CYQK) in the Icon A5, a modern floatplane I originally referred to as "experimental" but which later discussion clarified is a certified Light Sport Aircraft. We also had a "realism mod" (fine-tuning flight dynamics) and an enhanced avionics package, both found on flightsim.to. Multiple stream visitors pointed out the Icon's similarities to an exotic sports car, and we later learned that Lotus Engineering (among several other automotive designers) had a hand in its creation.

It wasn't immediately obvious how to power up the main navigation display, and later found that it seemed to be a glitch assigning a hardware switch to the Avionics Master rather than manipulating it by mouse. We also later encountered issues based either on the simulated aircraft's inability for, or simply my own unfamiliarity with, several key functions for maneuvering the craft in water. The first was to drop anchor or tie to a dock -- and the second was to send the propellor into an idle or an idle-reverse, such as you would be able to do in a small boat. My little bit of boating experience failed to help my docking ability because of those two shortcomings -- which, in fairness, were potentially my lack of knowledge and preparation, if indeed these functions are provided for in the sim. We did end up needing to slew, respawn, and "active pause" at various times to "make it work."

With all that being said -- we started at Kenora and got the initial kinks worked out, then flew a few quick circuits to get familiar with the plane's overall handling characteristics. Generally speaking, it's a powerful and nimble plane which glides extremely well. We then struck off for Peterson's Landing, a dock about five miles north and west of Kenora, which we only knew the location of because I had spawned in there to check it prior to the stream going live. Our first water touchdown went remarkably smoothly and we then "taxied" (or "boated," really) over to the dock. At that location, we found a few of our friends already docked, and also found in the custom scenery a map that included a few marked locations as well as two unidentified red Xs. We needed a hint to figure out what lake was represented in the map, but soon determined it was about 30nm north, and we were able to match it up with the SkyVector chart from that point.

We elected to explore the unidentified red Xs east-to-west, and relied on others in the group to tell us what to call them on CTAF. Easternmost was Kettle Falls, which we found from the air but almost lost our bearings on after touchdown. A "cheat" in the camera view got us back on track. We then took off again (though we considered traveling by water instead) to One Man Lodge, just a few miles south and west, on the near tip of an island which reminded us of an old handlebar mustache. Finally we continued south and west to find the one marked location of the evening, Caribou Falls. Here we discovered a descriptive sign which seemed to be pointing us toward the other two locations -- and realized that we'd done the adventure in the opposite order than was likely intended. Still, we had a great time exploring the area by camera, and found the gorgeous namesake falls well-represented in the sim.

All in all, it's doubtful that the Icon A5 would make its way into my regular rotation, as it doesn't really fit the mold of the aircraft I most enjoy flying. But if I were to discover how to maneuver and dock it in the water, I wouldn't be opposed to breaking it out on special occasions. The genesis of the series was always about forcing me to fly in ways I hadn't before, and I'd be missing out on exploring some amazing locations if I decided not to try a floatplane-based adventure again in the future. -- Watch live at   / slantalphaadventures