Ed_Moorman

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Acro planes I know, but when it comes to float flying, I am as clueless as they come. My flying partner and I were invited to a float fly in a nearby town so we are putting some floats on a couple of old planes. He built a 28" pair for a little, .15 powered, L-19 scale plane. I have an old Fazer with a Tower .46 I am putting floats on. Since I work and this term I am teaching 4 math classes for a local university, I am strapped for time, so I looked for some ARF type floats. I found some 34" ones from Falcon Trading Co. They look pretty good to me. They claim up to 8 lbs so they ought to hold the Fazer.

I notice several people have asked about floats, and I don't know if these are good, bad or in-between, but I am adding photos. Looks like to me I can have them installed by next Saturday.

The first photos are the box and the plastic floats.

Ed_Moorman

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The next photos show the mounting hardware. The plastic gadgets on the "tree" mount to the top of the float. Notice the flanges on the bottom. These straddle the center spine of the float. They have some dimples where you are supposed to drill and mount, but you can mount anywhere. Since I am putting them on a fairly short nose fun fly plane, the dimples won't work for location.

The small hole is for your axle. The larger hole is for a speader bar. They recommend a kite spar, but I found a fiberglass pushrod is a loose fit. Some Zap-A-Dap-A-Goo ought to fix that.

Looks pretty straight forward to me.

I did buy a second set of Fazer profile gear. I plan to mount them to the float, then adlust the fuselage location to get a slight nose up attitude.

In a couple of weeks I'll find out if float flying really is that much fun.

Here is the Falcon Trading Co URL. I paid $59.95 for them.

http://www.falcon-trading.com/product.cfm?prodID=8

jrf

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Ed:

They are superb, on the water and in the air. Set that Phaser up with the top of the floats parallel to the chord line of the wing and the step 0 to 1/2" in front of the CG, and you will fall in love. (It is not a Cub, don't try to set it up like one.)

OBTW, on an airplane like the Phaser, the water rudder is not necessary unless the wind is up to near white cap stage. Just use the air rudder, full up elevator and bursts of throttle to bring the tail around.

Jim

Ed_Moorman

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I was not going to use their water rudder and pull-pull set-up. I plan to make a little 1x1 metal water rudder on 1/16 wire and hang it from the airplane rudder.

A pattern guy gave me the plane, a Sig Fazer, and it's not as 3D capable as the others I have: TopCap, Extreme 330, Funtana, Taco, so I figure I can risk it on the water, especially with the old Tower .46. It doesn't weigh much over 5 pounds so it ought to haul the floats OK.

How do the floats affect acro maneuvers, other than added weight? There will be some drag, but I don't fly fast anyway.

jrf

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The weight raises the wing loading, which is evident in the stall speed and the uplines and downlines. The position of the floats adds pendulum effect, so your midwing Phaser will roll more like a shoulder wing stick. (As you can guess, the best float plane aerobatics come from a low wing with a light wing loading such as a Four Star or Sky Tiger.) You will need a little up trim to compensate for the drag. The weight and position of the floats makes tumbling maneuvers more radical and spins more persistant. Landings and take offs are a bit faster, but the lack of thermals off the water makes them smoother with the result that they are actually easier to grease on water than on land.

The plane will act differently, but not worse. Set up is a bit different than on land, but once you figure it out, float plane aerobatics are at least as much fun as they are on land.


Jim

JimCasey

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I (mostly) agree with JRF: Aerobatics are still lotsa fun with floats. The floats have something of an inverted airfoil shape, and some planes have better inverted flight with floats. Usually there is some trim change when adding floats. In my experience I have always needed to add DOWN trim. JRF says to add UP. Different airframes-different results. Just be ready to re-trim on your first flight.

jrf

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Jim (and Ed):

By "up trim" I mean to trim the elevator up (pull the trim handle/lever/button toward you). Are we saying the same thing in two different ways?

I'm having trouble figuring out a way that adding floats could require more down elevator to fly level.

Jim

Ed_Moorman

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Well, I got the floats mounted and a buddy and I did a test float in his little pond. Floats level as far as we can see.

I haven't checked the CG, but it can't be too far off. The plane was OK with a TT .42GP, but really under powered (someone gave it to me). I have an old Tower .46 in the nose so it was going to be nose heavy. I hope the floats will move the CG to the rear.

We plan to test fly in the bayou from his back yard. It's fairly wide, but still, I hate to do acro in a populated area. And I would like to get some acro in, either there or at the float fly-in on the 15th so I can write about how adding floats affects aerobatics.

Ed_Moorman

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If it works out, I may even paint the floats.