funcars

I've just finished building the 6"Unionville Beaver and did some taxing today. All was going well until a bit of wind came up making the water choppy and with the ac pointed into the wind and a bit of power added she nosed in all the way with the tail proudly pointing skywards!

After retreiving the plane I was able to drain all the water, thankfully none got into the fuselage but certainly the engine got a good dunking. I pulled the glow plug, turned it over with the electric starter to ensure I got all the water out of it and started it up without too much of an issue and let it run to make sure it was ok.

My question is why did it nose in? I'm running 36" Hangar 9 ARF floats mounted pretty much in the landing gear blocks. I aligned the float step to the recommended CoG. The floats are forward of the cowling front by 7". I'm running the OS 46 with a Bison muffer. When the water was calm with no wind it taxied pretty good.

I'm new to float flying so any and all help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Gary

Mike Ferretti

My Feedback: (1)

Dear Arsenaga: I have been float flying for many years. I am flying my fourth one now. I have a model beaver on floats that I bought from a friend of mine, { Thanks, Tom!!! }, on Scratch Built foam floats that is, it sounds, almost the same size as yours. My beaver works, floats, takes off, lands and flies, and taxi's just fine... In my opinion the person on the other thread who told you to use 3 degrees of postive incidence on the wing gave you some Very Bad advice!!! Three degrees is Huge!!! In my opinion, way too much!!! In my opinion, when you have the wing set postive incidence relative to the top of the floats, especially if this much, when you power up to take off, the Airplane will "WeatherVane" front to back to level with the suface of the water, which then causes the front half of the floats to "Plow" into the water!!! Enormous drag!!! In my Opinion, this has also the same effect as telling your Floats to
Dive!!!, Dive!!!, Dive!!! at at a 3 degree down bubble!!! Your not trying to make your model into a submarine! Please go to you tube, and watch as many movies as you can of beavers on floats, both all models, and full size. In other words, try a positive incidence of the wing of Maybe ONE Degree maximum. Actually, I believe all my planes are at an incidence of Zero, or even slightly negative... You want the floats mounted so that when power up to take off, the airplane is "LeveL" with the water, not tail high or Tail low. Try to find some one who lives close to you with more experience, for help!!! These things are very hard to expain remotely...
Mike.

Mike Ferretti

My Feedback: (1)

Arsenaga, in another thread in this forum the guys are building, and flying larger Beavers, and Are using +2.5 degrees for the wing. Do you have any down thrust set ito the mounting of your engine??? This maybe part of it... Also, in my opinion, it would be well within the realm of "Normal" for you to have to "Pull Back" very large amounts of Up Elevator on your plane as it is accelerating on the take off run. As it is accelerating you can gradually release portions of it, as it is gaining speed across the water. The up elevator on the take off run should help keep the nose out of the water. Do NOT even try a wood prop. Be very, very ready to release another large amount of the up elevator when the plane leaves the water, or it will rotate to much too high of an up angle, Stall, and you will have a fairly bad "Splash / Crash" on your hands... On climb out holding in about about maybe, say 1/4 of up elevator movement would be OK, if your total elevtor throw is a Scale like small amount.... Please look at their pics of the larger KMP Beavers, for an idea of how the correct mounting of the floats.
Their pics came out really good!!!
Walt, I Apologize.

Mike.

funcars

Thanks Mike. Between you and Walt I think I've enough info to get this corrected. Somehow I managed to get 2 postings on this unintentionally and both brought great and useful responses. Hopefully this weekend with that info I'll get some successful taxi trails in.

Gary