Quote Originally Posted by av8rps View Post
Hey Lynn, nice to hear from you!

I'd love to hear your success and your woes with floating your Fox...
After I got the floats rigged (pretty much to your suggestions, Paul), I tried taxiing, and the plane wouldn't respond correctly to input from brake applications...this is an anphib, as you recall. It turns out that I had crossed up the brake lines during the installation, so I swapped the lines where they crossed and this small problem went away...duh!

We got all the weights recorded, balance was within specs, and my flight instructor took it up for a flight...perfect...no handling issues. He took it to the lake, made a couple of landings, then I got in with him for a test flight, and a lesson. With two of us aboard...me 165 lbs, him 235...the plane took forever....45 seconds plus...to lift off. Next we tried getting on step, lifting a float and popping it off the water. This worked, but he suggested that the step needed to go further aft, as he could feel the aft of the floats being "snatched" down upon landing, and that the sweet spot was too hard to hold when trying to get on step. We tried more landings and takeoffs, but it was always the same story....long takeoff runs.

He suggested that because of the short wings, lift was suffering, so I told him that I could add the previously cut off (prior to my buying the incomplete plane) wing section back onto the plane.
That job kept me busy for a couple of weeks, and when I had that little chore done, I tried a flight...not much better, I felt, but hard to compare with previous flights from my field because of the long wet Spring, and the soggy grass runway, now dried out and comparing those conditions with a now-longer wing and now dry conditions.

During the next few weeks, I got intermittent training in his J-3 on straight Edo floats, and was getting more comfortable with this whole different aspect of float-flying, but not ready to solo yet. This was partly due to the backwards layout of the Cub....tach reads backwards, controls are in opposite hands, can't see the carb heat knob, water rudder lift handle is to the side and slightly behind me...all hard for this 78-year old adjust to. : )

All that, and his available time is short, because of his job flying for a major airline, and domestic duties, none of which I have, so the frustration level on my part is raising.

A couple of times he would have me landing at his place, and would distract me with talk of something or the other and I'd be on final with the wheels still up...exactly what he wanted to see. So he'd have me go around, naturally, and by now I figured that a checklist would be handy, and also for me to call for a "sterile cockpit" which shut him up. Don't get me wrong....he's just trying to keep me safe...and we get along just fine. I also work on planes for him in my spare time at his place.

So eventually he flies it to a hard-surfaced airport near here, (I drive) and do multiple landings on that smooth surface and he finally ok's me to fly solo after he's convinced that I can call out all the checklist items....carb heat, mixture, landing gear position, rpm, water rudder position, etc. I do 3-4 solo landings and he ok's me to fly it home solo to my place....finally, after 5 weeks of installing the floats, having it flown for tests, and flying it with my instructor, I was released to fly it home solo and park it in my own hanger. Now I can fly it by myself again...from and to land only, mind you...but at least I can fly it alone again. And now is when I can get into trouble ALL by myself...and I do!

That's enough for this segment, I'll continue later or tomorrow...Oshkosh experience, coming up.

Lynn