As it gets colder out, someone mentioned that you could use pontoons the same as ski's. Anyone have any experience with this? I will outfit my Alpha for snow one way or another.
Related question:
With ski's or pontoons, is steering just with rudder? Seems that would be the way. Would directions indicate how to mount them to replace trike gear? I haven't even started looking yet. I missed flying last winter, but I spent my time w/ Realflight G2.

Winter??? Snow???? Skis??

Uhhh.... In California, I think that is when we put on a sweater before go fly, and have to quit flying around 5PM ...

Cheers!

Jim

Hey, I used to live south of you in El Centro. Used to watch the Blue Angels practice over my house. There were 2 weeks a year where it could get to freezing temps overnight. Used to listen to the ag report in the morning, telling how many leaves of "lettuce ice" you had to wait to thaw before they could resume the lettuce harvest. Now, I have snow (which I could see on the mountains, about 40 miles away) in my backyard. The biggest difficulty I would have is the holes from deer tracks. That was kind of why I was leaning to pontoons, if they would handle the snow.

Hi there.

Since no-one else has responded, I'll throw my $0.02(Canadian) of snow experience in. I was at the field about 5 times last winter on Skis (maybe 7 flights in total). I was flying an UltraSport 40+ with .40 size DuBro Skis.

The first time I was there the snow was about 6" deep, but it was the first (real) snow of the season, it was true "powder" snow, really really fluffy. It was not able to support the weight of the plane for long. Taxiing, and take-off was very very difficult. I would put the plane on the snow, and throttle up... the plane would move about an inch, and then sink a few inches into the snow. The snow was sow powdery that even though the prop arc was going more than an inch through the snow, there was no noticable change in RPM. My take-off that day consisted of going to full throttle, sinking into the snow, and ploughing (prop in the snow) for about 6 feet, at which point the plane "popped" up on to the snow and was airborne about 6feet later. A few days later I spoke to another club member who said he had been at the field the same day as me (but later), and he said the snow was perfect with his float-plane.

None of my subsequent visits to the field were the same. We often get warmer days (above freezing), and that causes a crust to form on the snow. This crust is more than enough to support a plane on skis. So, even with an inch or so of fresh snow over a crust is just fine with skis.

Bottom line, the floats are good for some snow, but not all snow.... feel like Miss Smilla? On the whole I would say that for me, in Toronto, Skis are more practical than floats, especially because of the aerodynamic differences between them. For what it's worth, I did not have to change the plane's trim with skis on. It was a real challenge getting my OS46FX to run nicely though (or even start).

I'll include a pic for reference (proof...). In the picture you can see two "channels" one to the right of me, and one between me and my wife(taking the picture). This channels are previous attempts to take-off, where the plane "ploughed" though the snow for a number of feet. The engine in this picture is running at a high idle. I also had full "up" elevator, a habit from less snowy days (to prevent nose-over), but in this snow it just turned my elevators into a snow-brake (The counter-balance of the elevators dug into the snow and "scooped" it up...).

gus

To answer some of your other questions...

in summer our field is grass, in winter, on skis, the plane is far more "agile" on the ground. In sumemr, a high idle and the plane won't move. In winter (on the other days I was at the field), it was not easy to keep the plane still with anything more than a very, very low idle. The "ground" handling of my plane in winter was far better than summer on grass. Turning is with the rudder (I Fly tail-dragger planes...). I did not change my tail-wheel for the snow. I had only two skis, one on each main gear. I have seen Tri-gear ski sets for sale, but never seen them in action. The ski's have a ridge along the bottom that makes the planes track quite well on the ground, performance is not a problem.

As for mounting skis, yes, the du-bro's come with instructions. They have this spring mechanism so that the skis are set up to have an incidence parallel to the wing (or pointing slightly up), but when on the ground the spring lets the ski ride at whatever angle is appropriate for the plane. I have converted my trainer to tail-dragger, and I'll probably put skis on it this winter to get my wife and another friend out and flying it. I imagine that the differences between tri-ski and tail-dragger ski setups are comparable to the differences with just regular wheels.

All the best.

gus

I just fly the park flyers in the winter, My fingers go numb when starting.lol

Darn you all!


Just when I was getting close to getting floats for flying off of the snow... this thread comes up..
I live here in Michigan. and the people out at our field all suggest floats....

but there is just something a bit "off" about flying floats on snow

Don't get me wrong... I have no personal experience flying with floats off snow. I do know that there are lots of types of snow, and I have had problems on occasion. But, for me, at my field, I can say that for the most part, skis have worked out for me, and the flying characteristics of my plane on skiis are similar enough to "summer" flying that I personally could not really tell a difference.

Let's wait till someone with floats/snow experience speaks up.

gus

I still live in El Centro.
The Blue Angles are home for the Winter.
The Snow Birds are heading this ways also
The heat is finally over.
I been building all summer, staying in doors and out of the heat.
The weather is beautiful, now.

I used to live in Cardiff and then Rancho Bernardo and worked across the street from Miramar.....

The Navy was one of our clients so was able to drive out on the flight line at Miramar on several occasions...

Now THOSE are toys!!

I delete double post..... sorry.

I worked at Miramar the last 3 years I was in Uncle Sam's Canoe Club. I made many detachments to El Centro, Yuma, and China Lake. I moved to El Centro when I got out, and used to work up to Rancho Bernardo and even had Lawrence Welk Villiage as a customer. I loved it there in the desert. The best weather on the planet, with the exception of the "smut clouds" from the cattle yards.

Anyway, I heard that pontoons were the way to go, and I have found some sets here. There are now ski's starting to show up, and a fair difference in price, also. I got my taildragger trainer conversion cracked up while I was training my son in law on it. My fault, my mistake. I let him get away with it without taking it over when I had my doubts about where he was going with it. That leaves the trainer with the trike gear to convert either to floats or ski's. I live just a little south of Toronto, (we get their leftover snow and wind). So, normally we get a fair deal of snow, and like Gus described, once it warms a little, it will crust up or get a pack going. My thoughts were that the pontoons would be able to go over "holes" like deer prints and people prints more easily than ski's.

trike gear on skiis is a challenge, you need hard enough snow to support the plane. whereas an overpowered tail dragger is a blast on the snow, sinking in doesn't matter as it can pull it self out vertically anyway. (the pic below was hard crusty ice snow, I think i spent as much time cruising around on the ground as i did flying!

as far as the dubro skiis, i've seen people install the springs both ways. the way I prefer is to let the ski ride up in the front, and set the neutral angle to 5 or 10 degrees up also. this helps the plane stay on top of the snow much easier.

[link=http://www.ryankramer.com/planes/images/se2.jpg][/link]

I fly a modified Superstar with a TT .46 Pro from snow, using floats, & it works pretty well. I also have a coro seaplane (looks a bit like a Seamaster) & it also flies well from snow.