Don’t worry Nic, only a warning.
“Floating can give your Orion a clipped wing!”
Ed of course did experience the disadvantage of floating just as we still do, read several posts of it.
Advantage: very soft landings, nearly no problems for me to keep the short retracts alive, even on grass.
Disadvantage: You nearly cannot point the plane on a spot, it is always a looooong dash.
Our (for me new) field is small with a short and long diagonal. Last flight I did have to use the short diagonal for the first time to land but still with some crosswind. See picture 1
Last flight, (the max engine RPM was 10300 on the ground) was very, very well.
So that could be a controlled landing too, with a trottled engine to have some speed for the controllability of the crosswind on a low final.
Yesss that floating forces you to make low finals, so be carefull and do not hit the wires!! No, no problem they are more to the left!!!
See picture 2 and 3 , this was the fourth flight for me on this field, first on this diagonal.
Who did park his Spruce Goose over there? I did not see that!!
So the next back stage project for me is: “Redesign and reconstruction of the Oldest Orion of me.”
Picture 4 to do list:
1 New wing aileron sections, light weight, so both sides with symmetrical wing tip airfoil.
2 New design lower weight retracts was already on the list after a lot of modifications.
3 Probably no frise ailerons.
4 Clipped wings, one section of 7,5 cm both sides
5 Flaps
Why this all? Just to learn from my “Experimental Orion”.
Floating you also can reduce by lowering the tail cone angle I know, but the fuselage is still oké and I do not want to make a Taurus from that Orion. (On topic again, it did has to do with one of the reasons Ed did design the Taurus!)
See also this video, 1 min 40 sec. The nice tricycle Orion from Hillville. My tail wheel Orion is much lower near the ground so also floats more!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Qtz39-sf0
So Nic , Oh Yes, I like designing and building. I never have a lot of planes, only a lot of work on a few of them.
Cees