A few pictures of my GWS Float plane fleet. started out with a Pico Moth with some built up floats it worked so well that I had to build up a couple of more planes. I next built a GWS Tiger Moth 400 (TM400) covered it with White Solite and Enlarged the floats to match the TM400 and covered them also with Solite. Built up a GWS Zero with Floats (Rufe). Got a chance to maiden them yesterday at a Club Float Fly. Both new planes have 400XT and Lipos. The TM400 turned out to be a real winner flew great and handled the breeze well, got many flights ot of it. The Zero (Rufe) tracked well and got up on step well and lifted off the water but pitched up once it broke water. I was not able to react quick enough to correct the flight attitude and it ditched in the water. I didn't get another chance to fly the Rufe may have suffered water damage to the ESC. Both the new plans had the ESC protected with Silicon Conformal Spray not Corrosion X but didn't seem to help with the dunking the Rufe got. Need to add some weight to the nose to correct the pitch problem and fix the ESC problem will try again. All my planes don't have water rudders. I will add water rudders to the TM400 and Rufe to help with the water handling in breezes. The two new planes got a good reception by the Club. The Pico Moth didn't handle the breeze well that we had yesterday but I now have a couple of planes to fly when the breezes are present. Thank You GWS for some nice planes!

ggray,

You have a real fleet !
Here is another Zero with float. It's built by a famous old
flyer, Mr. Hwang, in Taipei, Taiwan.

Sweet looking planes regardless of the floats. But pretty cool with them!!

I'd like to see video!!!

Hi alienx, thank you for you kind comment. Iwill try to get some video and flying stills the next time we are float flying. An update on the Rufe problem I thought was caused by the ESC being dunked in water. I got a chance to look at the plane last night and found the motor would run but had a problem running consistently. The motor would stutter and if I would quickly throttle back then add power back on it would run Ok. When I would stop and try running it again it again would stutter a bit and I could get it to run smoothly buy repeating the throttle down and up quickly process. I guess I didn’t get all the water out of the motor when I tried to run it earlier in the day. I don’t know if anyone else has tried this but I shot some WD40 into the motor last night and let it drain overnight and it now runs like new. I originally thought the ESC had gone belly up but I guess the Silicone Conformal Spray I used on the ESC that I bought at Frys worked OK. Will keep a close eye on performance of the 400XT to see if there are any ill effects from the WD40 treatment. Would like to know if anyone else has used WD40 on their motors that have been dunked in water and how it worked for them.

Originally Posted by ggray

Would like to know if anyone else has used WD40 on their motors that have been dunked in water and how it worked for them.

From what I remember, that is exactly what I've seen suggested fro your situation.

WD40 should work (I mean, that's what the WD stands for after all). Another alternative is to run the motor submerged in rubbing alcohol, it will absorb the water and dry quickly. That's also how I break my motors in

Justin
www.CommonSenseRC.com