Seafarer (oz16743)

About this Plan

Seafarer. Free flight sport floatplane model for rubber power. Wingspan 28 in.

Quote: "Build our cover plane, put on your boots, and discover the fun of ROW flying. Seafarer, by Bill WInter.

Sooner or later, every modeler has a fling at a seaplane. There are few types of models that are more exciting and certainly none that are more interesting. But as we all find out, a seaplane is an ornery design problem. Before telling you about the construction of the Seafarer, we'd like to trace some of the difficulties and consequent improvements made in the original model.

Our first concern was to provide plenty of buoyancy and 'sea-sled' action for quick, sure take-offs. We very quickly discovered that the pontoons had weird effects on the flight characteristics of the airplane. Ordinarily, a designer would expect that the position of these unstrearnlined pontoons would tend to make the plane nose down under po With this in mind, we located wing a bit further forward t would be done with a rub powered landplane.

This, coupled with the extremely light weight of the floats, resulted in a ship that trimmed heavy at about two-thirds chord, rather than at one-third chord, the customary balance point for a plane that does not employ a lifting type stabilizer. And, naturally, the plane stalled. Then the wing was moved backward to the position shown on the plans - but other, peculiar thingd were happening.

Hand launched, the ship would fly properly while power lasted, but when, power faded it begin to nose up, finally reaching a stalled position just as power died completely. An interesting point is that the ship would not whipstall, or even do a complete stall, but would mush down, landing on its flat pontoons with their flexible wire mounts as if on shock-absorbing springs.

All the usual efforts to take out this last-minute stall failed. Down-thrust was used, as shown on the plans, with the ship so trimmed that it flew so low and fast that further anti-stall trimming would have induced a dive. Since the model was orthodox, except for its floats, it was obvious that the trouble must be in the floats. As power varied, these floats - which are crude airfoils after all, set at a positive angle of attack - apparently were producing variable combinations of lift and drag..."

Direct submission to Outerzone.

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