Or "Flying floats with a lack of power and too many people aboard" ?

Now the big one...

Three days after I had set the plane back to its' original location relative to the floats, and flying it off the ground only, I made a spur of the moment decision to fly to Coldwater (KOEB) airport for lunch with 4 other planes. I was the last one to get there, and I had heard all the others calling for landing on 07. The wind was 150 at about 14 knots, as I recall. That made for an 80 degree crosswind landing if you took 07, or a 10 degree slight headwind if I took 16, which is turf, but crosses both 7-25 and 4-22. Thinking I'd be better off dealing with the turf-to-hard stuff transition than the 80 degree crosswing, I opted for the 16 turf runway. Making sure the wheels were down and locked, I called for the landing and eased it down, cruising over 7-25, and touching down just after that runway, and getting on the brakes hoping to get slowed before I crossed 4-22. Well, I didn't, and the transition was not as smooth as I would've liked. The plane bounced a bit, crossed 4-22 and I got slowed down and made the turn-around and taxied back to the restaurant, which is near 7-25 mid-field. Had a nice lunch of French Onion soup, swapped lies with the rest of the gang, told them of my decision process that had me coming in like I did, posed with them for pictures by my plane, and we all headed out. By this time, the wind had shifted to better favor an 07 midfield departure, and off we went. I retracted the wheels, everything seemed ok, and I flew home. Got home, called out...to myself...all the usual landing tasks, wheels down especially, and landed without incident. Taxied to the hangar, pushed it back inside and was feeling pretty smug until I noticed that the right front wheel was sitting kinda offset. The front fork had a couple of about 10 degree bends in it. It is made of two 3/16" aluminum plates, parallel to each other, but now bent like a jog in the road. The fork would still retract, but it was offset, and would require replaceing. Then I looked further into the mountings, and saw that the upper part of the bulkhead was ripped right at the flange where it was riveted to the outer skin. There are two plates that are supposed to be braces, but they both broke off during the landing, one was missing, and the other was hanging by a thread, I easily pulled it off. The welds were very poorly made (factory), not penetrating nearly enough for the job. When I get a replacement part, you can bet that I'll do a much better job of making those welds secure!

So now I've removed the floats, I'm back flying on wheels, and I have the one float home in my shop and I'm currently designing a suspension system for the front of these floats which will absorb any future landings like the one I have described. Harking back to what my CFI told me: "Make all landings on pavement whenever you have a choice, and if your destination is turf, go somewhere else for breakfast" That's a little harsh, I think, but after the landing that I made, it's probably better to have listened to him than not.

I had thought of running low pressure in the tires to help absorb shocks, but the tiny little...2.80/2.50-4's...don't carry enough air to allow for such a practice. The mains are 4.00-6's, so I can run them a bit on the soft side which will help, but making a spring suspension for the fronts is definitely the way to go, I think.

I've tried to straighten the bulkhead where it is bent, but to no avail, so I've cut the upper part of the bulkhead out and will replace it and strengthen it in the process, as well as design and build the aforementioned suspension system, using a small coil spring....at least that's the plan for now.

My home field is turf, so I'm stuck with at least one takeoff and one landing on turf, and so I have to have something that will hold up to these conditions if I'm to fly with the floats at all. Making the floats stronger and capable of handling rough field conditions through the addition of some sort of suspension system will be top priority on my calendar, for sure. Then I can get back to seeing if it will make a worthy seaplane.



Back to what you said, Paul, about the rears being snatched down....Brian says he has worked on large seaplanes...Widgeons, etc...that would demonstrate this phenomenon of "snatching". He says he felt the tails of my floats being sucked down during landing...(my ass is too old to feel anything anymore)...and he calls this being snatched down. What they did to improve this condition was to make a hole in the bottom of the area back behind the step, and run a vent tube up from there, exiting out the upper side of the float skin. This vent, he said, breaks the suction that occurs from the water passing under the step, and affecting the bottom of the rear portion of the float....I hope I'm explaining this right. He showed me a fuselage that is in one of his hangars that is a Widgeon that has this vent. It is just a box-shaped tube that connects the upper side of the float to the bottom of the float, which allows air to enter from the top and out the bottom, and supposedly breaks the vacuum in that behind-the-step area. He also said that he's never seen this on a set of floats, but has seen it and done it on hull-type floats.

Part of the reason for his feeling so strongly about this tentative modification is that the "sweet spot" is very hard to achieve....it's either on the step, or the tails are in the water when "on the step" is being sought.

He had me measure the Edo floats on the Cub, and on my floats, comparing the angle behind the step on both makes. I found that the Edo's had 0.8 degrees greater angle than the Zenith's, measured from the horizontal to the rear keel. I didn't think that less than a degree would make much of a difference in finding the sweet spot, but I could be wrong. In any event, I won't be cutting these vent holes until I repair the floats, and have weighed all the input that I can gather concerning this theory. Whatcha think?

Lynn