Design
The Seawind is most distinctive for its engine pod, which juts forward from the leading edge of the very large vertical fin. The design is also noted for its long, low profile and sleek curves made practical by composite construction.
The Seawind is relatively quiet for the crew, primarily because the engine is above and behind the cabin and the exhaust is routed up and aft. Some amphibian aircraft use a pusher propeller arrangement, which causes the exhaust to pass through the propeller plane which can increase noise. The Seawind uses a conventional tractor propeller arrangement that avoids this issue.
The cabin is very wide for an airplane of this type and seats 4 adults. A factory option replaces the aft executive bucket seats with seating for 3 children. The wide cabin also supports a large instrument panel, allowing installation of virtually any avionics.
There are three cargo compartments: under the nose deck ahead of the canopy, behind the rear seats in the cabin, and the tailcone.
The wing uses a constant-chord NASA NLF airfoil drooped at the ends. The wingtips provide some endplate effect to increase ground effect and reduce induced drag. They also serve as wingtip floats. The wing has a reflexed (negative angle of attack) trailing edge to reduce drag at cruise.
The Seawind 2000 and 3000's retractable landing gear is hinged to the side of the hull and folds up into the wing for flight and water operations. The certified landing gear is a trailing link-type, fully mounted in the wing.
An electric/hydraulic powerpack provides hydraulic power for the flaps, landing gear and nose-wheel steering. The hydraulic pack and battery are located in the nose compartment.
Fuel is gravity fed from the main tanks to a header tank to supply the engine. Optional long range tanks in the wing tips have electric pumps to transfer fuel to the main tanks. Fuel can also be pumped from side to side to correct any lateral imbalance.
Steering on land is provided by differential braking. Hydraulic nose-wheel steering is available as an option. A retractable water rudder is slaved to the air rudder for water operation.
Read more about this topic: Seawind 300C
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“Westerners inherit
A design for living
Deeper into matter—
Not without due patter
Of a great misgiving.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life ... for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,—some of its virus mingled with my blood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)