Here's a little winter project I'm working on for a friend

Another shot.
182 Cessna Skylane,96" span, Fiberglass Masters floats, Sea Commander spreader bars and struts, G38 power.

Very nice looking floats! Two years ago at Oshkosh I took pics of the Cessna SeaLane. Unfortunately, not on dig camera. Cool plane though!

Since my curiosity was up, I did a search and saw some info:

[link=http://www.seaplaneswest.com/sealane.htm]Seaplanes West[/link]

Photo of the float attachment. The Sea Commander hardware is neat.
The plane is owned by a friend of mine named Mark "Rudy" Diluis. Rudy is the owner of Mark's Hobby Warehouse located in Pittsburgh, PA. Rudy bought the plane used at a flea market, the plane was scratch built. He flew the plane off land and managed to strain it through a tree. He also aquired the floats at a flea market and had them setting at his shop. When I ask him what he planned to do with the floats, he told me he wanted to use them on a Robin Hood. After several minutes of telling how stupid it would be using these beatiful scale floats on a Robin Hood, he considered another subject.

At the start of the project, a Hanger 9 Super Cub was scheduled for installation on the floats, after a day or so, the Cub was deemed unacceptable and the Cessna took it's place.

Here's a photo of the finished mounting system.

Photo of the water rudder servo installation. The rudders are operated by torque arm, a stuffing box seals the drive shaft on the transom of each float. The stuffing box was fabicated out of K&B brass tubing and sealed with o-rings.

Work is continuing on engine installation and cowl. Here are some recent photos. Hopefully the fitting work will be completed soon and I can move on to finishing off the fusage. The fusalge will be glassed with .5 oz cloth and epoxy. Rudy is wipping me like a rented mule to get this thing done for the spring flying season.

New Cowl complete with landing lights.

Engine and cowl installed finsihed off with a Truturn 2 7/8" Ultimate spinner.

COOL!!!! Any chance I could get you to work on one of those for me?????

Rudy casually mentioned to me I misspelled his name earlier, It's Diulis, sorry Rudy! Since the last post, the Cessna got the better of me so I've decided to work on something of my own so that I have a plane to fly next season, my Hurly Extra is engineless and I'm not about to drop $1300 for a new DA 100.
I'm builing a 33% Giles and once it's complete I'll get back on the Cessna.

OOPS!!! It's Diulus.

I might be wrong, but I thought that the N strut was normally the other way. Isn't the center leg supposed to be in tension when under take off and landing stress instead of compression?

Check Seaplane West site linked above, you will notice the N struts as installed. Most planes are converted tail draggers where the mail gear is located in the front of the CG, the main gear on the skylane is located behind the CG.

Looking good Tony!
I've also got the Sea Commander mounting system for a Super Cub I'm putting on floats, and
was wanting to know how you tied in the "N" strut to the Sea Commander brackets?
Also, what hardware did you use for the tensioning rods
Hope mine turns out as well as yours!
Thanks for any and all help,
Duane

Ed:
I thought so too. There is a cable running in the "tension" direction (hard to see in the photos). Maybe the combination of the cable in tension and the strut in compression provides better overall resistance to flexing under varying conditions.

Jim

Flier,
Here are some photos of the N strut attachment. These are the front attachement points in my case, I used the tabs on the Sea Commander brackets, the 3/8 x 5/16 key stock provide in the attachment was saw cut so that it sides over the tab, I then drilled and tapped the key stock for 4-40 thread, access holes were drilled to get to the socket head screws.

Forgot the photos!

Aother of the front attachement point

The rear attachment, the tabs were removed from the attachement brackets, both front and rear, a saw cut in the spreader bar key staock provides access for 1/16 stainless steel sheet stock.

The key stock is saw cut and slid of the stainless steel and attched with a 1/2" long 4-40 screw, this screw is hidden in the streamline tubing.

A Big Thank you Tony,
Now about that neet looking hardware and mounting system used for your tensioning rods. . . . .

Thanks again,
Duane

I used DuBro 4-40 threaded rod ends, the cross bracing is 3/32" 308 stainless steel TIG filler wire.

The 3/32 wire was threaded with a die, it's smaller than a 4-40 thread but it gives enough to work with, the 4-40 threaded rod ends were tapped with a hammer to crush the theaded hole to engage the threads on the filler wire, after the ends were adjusted to proper length, the ends were soldered on. How this helps, any other questions, just ask.

Tony,
Thats pretty nice work!
308 stainless in 3/32" threaded to 4-40 for rods, with the DuBro hardware.
I'll get the same, looks great!
Thanks so much,
Duane