Prairie Beaver

[Newflee]

Here are a couple shots of my GWS beaver on home made floats. She flies 100% more stable on the floats and lacks nothing in control response. It does need some type of directional control while taking off on water. A water rudder would be ideal but I'm already at 17 oz with 6cell 720 Mah Nicad pack. I may try to rig up a pull pull system with monofilament line.

I already posted these pics in the parkflyer forum, but I thought they belong here too. It would be great if this forum got off the ground.


Lee

[Newflee]

another

[Shawn Palmer]

That's one sharp looking plane Lee!

Shawn

[fumblethumbs]

Nice plane, Newflee. If you're using NiCads, switch to a 7 or 8 cell NiMh pack. You'll drop an oz. in weight at least. -thumbs

[Newflee]

That's the plan Thumbs. I need to get a charger for Nimh first. I'm lookin at the Triton charger. It looks good and will allow me to play with lithiums too.

[Rob Schaffer]

The triton is a great charger. I just got one and now I wonder why I didn't sooner. Beautiful beaver by the way. I fly mine with 7 cell 800 mAh NiMh, and it is great. Plenty of power when you need it for loops from level flight, and long flight times to boot. Most of the time I can fly at half throttle for some nice cruising around the sky.

:cool:

[Radioguy]

Lee:

Nice looking deHaviland you have there. Mine is started, but got temporarily sidetracked probably til next float season.

The colour scheme for mine will be the old Norcanair paint job for C-FFHB that flew when I was working for them in Uranium City, SK. about 25 yrs ago. It is now in the Aviation Museum in Ottawa. See picture attached.

I'm in St. Francois Xavier and have a nice little gravel pit close to home that I'd like to use for water flying next year. The water surface is about 500 ft long and 150 ft wide. Access is somewhat limited at the shoreline due to bullrushes, but that might be the perfect excuse to buy a small boat!

Looking forward to maybe bumping into you sometime!

Regards,
Lee Smith

[Ironsides]

Lee:

Roger on the water rudders and fishing line. Here is what I have used

"The easiest and cheapest rig is to put a double barred servo arm on the rudder servo. That is, the arm length is equally long on both sides of the pivot point. Tie two lengths of light nylon fishing line to each side of the servo arm (two lines for each rudder). Glue a small length of fuel tubing into the bottom of the fuselage, canted towards the rear. Pass the four lines to the rudders."

David

[Newflee]

Lee, I hope to run into you as well. I must say that seeing your name and location, I thought for a moment that I was being fooled with. Send me a PM with your email and I will get in touch.

David, that's how I was thinkin of doing it, except I won't bother running rudders on both floats. One small one should be enough I think. There's only one way to find out. To be honest I prefer to hand launch the beav but the taxi in will be better with the rudder. Sometimes the water is a kittle rough but the winds are still enough to fly.


Lee:cool:

[Brooks]

nice looking beaver and floats. I could not tell from the photo if you've done this already, but GWS/Horizon Hobby has posted a wing strengthing mod, involving an X of filament tape on the underside of the beaver wing. Seeing your plane and others on floats has made me determined to get one myself.

http://horizon.hobbyshopnow.com/products/description.asp?prod=GWS1030

[Newflee]

Brooks,
On my first beaver I did the X taping and taped a 1/8" wood dowel on the underside of the leading edge with 3M reinforced tape.
On the beaver in the photos, all I have done is the dowl without the x tape and I loop the beav on floats with no problem. Just make sure you glue the strutt supports with epoxy and pin the strutts into the clevices. I have not experienced any flutter with my latest beav on floats.....even in a screaming nose dive pre-loop.

The strut integrity is key.


Lee