Hi All,

This is my first attempt at flying off water. I took my E-fite Apprentice and have installed the floats. I'm curious about balancing a plane with floats. On all my land planes I balance just a tad nose heavy. This works fine for land planes, but does it hold true for float planes. Seams to me that a float plane might not like nose heavy because it wants to keep the front of the floats up. What do you guys do.

Thanks

keep it nose heavy for sure....not sure if you did this or not, make sure your step on the float is at your C.G...

lots of float planes need a little weight in on the tips of the floats. The CG should at least be where it is on the plane without the floats or even little forward of that.

Keep thr CG the same, but add whatever weight is needed to the floats, not the plane. This way, any time you switch between wheels and floats the CG will remain the same

For what it's worth, the wing incidents from the floats should be about  1.5 or 2 degrees up from the floats or the plane won't want to leave the water. If when you try taking off and you see water coming up over the float tips, the incidents between the floats & wing are to close to one another. Add some shims under the forward strut and try it again. You shouldn't have to add much elevator to get off the water. You'll enjoy float flying.
Gerry