Here are some photos of the new floats I am trying. I added too much weight with the previous design and did have some rotation on landings that chipped a couple of props. I keep getting reminded that most people don't land in a gravel pit or rocky mountain slope but since I do I am trying to engineer for all runways.

The new float does a good job in preventing the forward rotation on landing. Once it is rounded it looks pretty good too.

Wowzers,
You can always cut the front of the float back and reshape the bottom. How are you doing on AUW with the fanfold?

I'm going to build some blue foam Snowballs too for the snow and water. This is quickly becoming my most flown plane.

I'm learning to do tumbles and aerobatics now that are on the edge of insanity. For me that is a comfortable place.


.

Wowsers,

Nice touch, (in post #59) to put the dimensions on the photo, I hope more people pick up on that, it looks like it is faster than making drawings too.
What program did you use for this? (I would use Micrografx Designer...)

Originally Posted by dbacon

Wowsers,

Nice touch, (in post #59) to put the dimensions on the photo, I hope more people pick up on that, it looks like it is faster than making drawings too.
What program did you use for this? (I would use Micrografx Designer...)

Thanks, this is the first time that I have ever put dimensions in a pic. I used my H.P. image editor that installs with H.P. printer software. since it was the only thing I had to do it with. It took a while to figuire it out, and I was kinda sloppy for the first time.

I went flying three different times today to check out new modifications of the floats. I think I flew out 12 batteries.

I know seagulls aren't known to be the brightest birds but I had several of them following my black and white Snowball for most of a flight. There was no question that the Snowball was definitely on their "Look at this" list.

I later had a large hawk circling high above and also watching the Snowball too. I went into the climb mode to see his reaction and he stayed right with me for a while.

The rounded tall float with the back edge at CG was the best in the grass. All of them work off the pavement equally well.

Has anyone tried a Snowball on water yet and if so any hints or tips that differ from the land version?

With Lee's ongoing float development I was wondering which design would be better for ROW I am leaning towards more of a Capricorn longer style although his latest short rounded float has a lot in common with a Storm Launcher and they ROW just fine?

Finally got the snowball finished, took about 4hrs total with electrics installed.
I put it together with pretty much all ca glue, and im surprised with how sturdy the front end is with the carbon tubeing. i could only find 5mm in our area. The way I have it set up, it does ballance right at CG.

I am going to try a 9x3.8 apc prop on a Hyperion z2209-26 Motor, which I have used on other builds and it scoots them along pretty good.

I had the 12" floats glued on already and it was a challenge to cut them off at 9" and reform cut the front angles. I thought the 12" stuck out too far in the front.

Motor mount I put a pic of my motor mount on here from another plane so you can see it better. I notched out a 3/8" deep and 3/8" wide notch on top of the foam mount and glued in about a 3/8" stick. It came out level to the top of the foam. I then c/a a small flat piece of carbon plate over the top for support. You could prob use a piece of flat ply instead. The black plastic mount slides onto the stick. Dont know the name of the plastic mount, im sure most shops have it

I may not get a chance to test until later this week. It was a fun build.

Overall finished weight with battery is 10.5 oz.

Thanks Lee

Originally Posted by wowsers

Finally got the snowball finished, took about 4hrs total with electrics installed.
I put it together with pretty much all ca glue, and im surprised with how sturdy the front end is with the carbon tubing. i could only find 5mm in our area. The way I have it set up, it does balance right at CG.

I am going to try a 9x3.8 apc prop on a Hyperion z2209-26 Motor, which I have used on other builds and it scoots them along pretty good.

I had the 12" floats glued on already and it was a challenge to cut them off at 9" and reform cut the front angles. I thought the 12" stuck out too far in the front.

I may not get a chance to test until later this week. It was a fun build.

Overall finished weight with battery is 10.5 oz.

Thanks Lee

Looks great. The 5mm tubing will work fine. 10.5 oz AUW is a great weight. That will put your wing loading between 3-4 oz a foot. Should be a real floater.

??????? More questions ????????

Are the floats EPS or EPP?

What size of battery are you using? It looks to be a 2s.

How many amps does the motor draw with that battery and prop?

Do you have enough prop clearance for the 9" prop?

Please post a close up picture of your servo, pushrod and horn connections and any secrets you have to keep them light.

Thanks for the info. Please post a video of it flying.

Lee

Thanks Lee

Floats are epp, fiber thread strapping tap on skids. Motor mount is the pink foam stuff.

Servos are the HS-55, Not sure of brand. Right now I have them stuck down with servo tape. Servo rods are the bamboo scewers for cooking, with wire c/a on each end and shrunk wrapped

Servo horns are Du-Bro Micro Razor Control Horns, which are light.

I have a 2s 7.4v Flightpower evo lite v2 1345 MAH lipo
I believe its 15 or 20 C

9.47prop 2s 7.7v 10 amps 7050RPM I have about 1inch clearance from tip of
prop to ground

8.38 prop 2s 7.7v 7.8 amps 7650RPM

Hyperion site only list for 6.7 or 7.7v which is as close as I can get to 7.4v battery

One thing that did help a lot was we used a RadioShack soldering iron Thin Tip from the Capricorn tutoral thread to groove out the wings so they could be glued up at 3". I also used a wider tip to groove out the foam for the carbon tube. I set the collor so it wouldnt go clear down to the plastic coating, just above it

I dont have acces to a vid camera, the way I fly I doubt if I would do any justice watching it fly. Im more of a builder than a flyer, even though I shouldnt have much problems with the snowball

Originally Posted by wowsers

Floats are epp, fiber thread strapping tap on skids. Motor mount is the pink foam stuff.

Servos are the HS-55, Not sure of brand. Right now I have them stuck down with servo tape. Servo rods are the bamboo scewers for cooking, with wire c/a on each end and shrunk wrapped


One thing that did help a lot was we used a RadioShack soldering iron Thin Tip from the Capricorn tutoral thread to groove out the wings so they could be glued up at 3". I also used a wider tip to groove out the foam for the carbon tube. I set the collor so it wouldnt go clear down to the plastic coating, just above it

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The EPP floats are hard to beat. I got goofing around yesterday and wore through the fiber tape on the bottom of one of my Snowballs with all of my racing around the track at the local school. This plane can go full throttle and stay on the ground with a trace of down trim. Letting the stick go to neutral and it jumps into the air. On grass there isn't a problem with the tape. The Formica or milk jug plastic holds up a little better for the hard runways.

I'm impressed with your overall weight. Just my 3s 1300 battery, a FC28-12 motor and 25A ESC and two HXT 900 servos and the carbon rod and pushrods was about 9 oz without the plane and glue. This plane flies well heavy which is unusual for a flatfoam plane. The plane in the first video weighs about 16 oz.

The HS55s are Hitec and fair servos. I have used them for a long time. I was guessing you had used the skewers for rods. I also learned with them they color well with a permanent marker if appearance is important.

Since you have seen the Capricorn Evolution Tutorial you have probably seen my rack of soldering irons that I use for most everything including occassional soldering. When you are working with foam the soldering irons are tools that can do a professional looking job with little effort.

On the Q-Eagle on the Q-Plane thread I used a soldering iron to cut the feather shape to the back of the wing, a soldering iron to cut out the servo and battery spaces, a soldering iron to cut the slots for the carbon rods, and a soldering iron to cut out the motor mount.

Another tool I have come to like is the long box knife that has the break off segments on the blade. Our local dollar store have them for 3 for a dollar. If you look at the black and white Snowball I used a soldering iron to cut out some of the radio slots smoothed out with a box knife.

I'm real curious about your first flight. If I was a betting man I would bet you will be pleased and surprised at how well it flies.

Lee

A few more things I want to pass on.

My motor is about 5 degrees of positive thrust.

The plane takes off deep grass the best if there is at least 2.25" of float under the plane at CG. Less and the tail of the plane can drag in grass and the plane can't rotate. One of my new more stylish float design attempts didn't work on grass even though it did fine on hard runways.

Here's Kurpal's version, the SeaBall, from page #81, post#1211 of the NutBall thread.

Looks great!!!

We need more pictures and video!!!!

On Tuesday A friend who helped me work on the Snowball and myself took it to a field for the maiden flight. With the hyperion motor and 9x6 prop it zipped right off the grass with no hesitation.

This sucker realy zipped through the air and climbed rapidly with the throttle pushed fast forward. Got in the wind prob 5 to 8 mph and was a real floater. The Hyperion was almost too much motor for it would fly well at half throttle, Pushing throttle full forward made it wobble back and forth to the sides some.
will also try and test with the 2409-21 motor.

We get a lot of rain in wash, and oregon so will have to wait for a nice day.

We only had it up for 2 to 3 min and then brought it down temporarily. We picked it up by the foam motor mount and I hadnt glued it down well enough, it came loose from the bluecore. Of course we didnt have glue with us so will have to test some more on another day.

Friend Terry has a lake in his back yard, Lucky Him. He placed it in the lake and it sat quite well on the floats for his future prospects and a water proof build.

Looks like a real winner.

Thanks Lee for all your hard work.

Originally Posted by goldguy

Here's Kurpal's version, the SeaBall, from page #81, post#1211 of the NutBall thread.

Goldguy,

From his posting, it sounded like Kurpal gave up early on developing floats which would work from water. My impresssion from the photos was that his 'floats' may have been too narrow -(not enough planing surface width for water takeoffs, from a hydro-dynamics perspective), and his floats may not have been shaped effectively on the forward running surface. (Also, his motor incidence may not have had enough positive for flying from floats... he didn't mention this aspect of his setup.)

Lee seems to have been progressively working towards tweaking the float design & layout to arrive at a more functional setup on his adaptation.

(We do a lot of snow flying up here at 10,000 feet, so having this quick-build simple snow flyer design variant detailed in this discussion thread is a GOOD thing!)

I look forward to doing a quick build of a SNOWBALL as soon as I get my work schedule cleared up a bit. Lee, thanks for all of the detailed photos - keep up the good work!!

VIKING

I called this plane the Snowball because we need a good plane for winter. I honestly didn't expect it to be so fun to fly. I have been flying this design about 3x week for 6 weeks and spend my time doing touch and goes with a roll right after take off and loops with a landing and a take off at the bottom and sliding sideways across the parking lot or doing donuts, or hops over curbs. I have never seen another plane that I would dare do these things with. I have as of yet to tear the EPP foam or break a plane.

I used to be in charge of the seaplane fly-ins for the local club and have spent a lot of time flying off water with glow engines. I would cut the floats as I have drawn to 2" or 2.5" wide and it will do well off of water. It might help to have a small float in the back to keep the tail out of the water but if the rear float too tall it will restrict rotation and make taking off the water more difficult.

Flying off water is fun but has it's risks of damaging the electronics. I have just as much fun flying off the grass or snow. These super light planes are sailboats on the water and a light breeze can blow them away or turn them over. The low CG on the Snowball will help to keep it flat but I have dried out many a receiver and servo.

On the Snowball I have even narrowed the floats to keep the weight down. I don't need the width to fly off snow, rocks, pavement, trees etc.

I have to admit I am disappointed that the EPP soaks up water and I am going to have to build a fleet of blue foam Snowballs for snow and water flying. So many ideas and so little time.......