That's great information coming from you, as I regard your opinion highly...from what I've seen here and in speaking to you personally....back in about 2005 or so at the seaplane base at Oshkosh.
You won't remember this, Paul, but I spoke with you about flying a short-wing Kitfox with a Jabiru 85 hp engine and you said that it would take a long-wing and probably 100 hp to get off the water succesfully. At that time, I was just building the plane, and pretty much gave up on the float idea back then.
By now, I've got 1595 hours on me and the plane, and have become bored with just flying around the patch (and around the country, from California to New York with this plane) and I needed a project to get my juices flowing again. I had just finished helping restore John Cuny's Republic Seabee....Grand Champion Seaplane this year....for the past 2 years, and I needed a project of my own. Over the past years of flying with the 2200 Jabiru, I have built tuned exhaust pipes for it, a large-plenum intake manifold with long tuned intake runners, and an Electroair ignition system. With all these mods, I got to thinking that maybe I might be getting close to that magic 100 hp that you said would be necessary for float operation. So that's the background behind this latest project of mine. It would be great to get the rigging such that it would be adjustable. My local mentor, Brian Vanwagnen, has already suggested that I do away with the "X" braces that Zenair supplies, which are cable, and I've started to make these from SS rod, 1/4" diameter. And I have built the floats using solid, driven rivets in place of the "pop" rivets that they provide.
Probably email would be the way to go, unless the moderators feel that your provided information would be of benefit to others, and in that case, posting here would be fine.
Lynn (lynnmatt@jps.net)