Seafoam (oz8036)

About this Plan

Seafoam. Radio control sport seaplane model. Uses the Midwest foam wing and stab combination.

Quote: "RCM's chief sunday flier comes up with his newest offering - the Seafoam, a 44 in span amphibian for .09 - .10 engines that is equally at home on water or land. By Ken Willard.

What do you think about when designing an amphibian? Lots of things, of course. But there's one thing you have to think about more so than the other items, and that's water, Yes, water. Why? Well, because most of the requirements regarding hull line, angle of attack of the wing when on the step, positioning of wing floats, etc., are pretty well established - but everytime you put a flying boat hull in the water, unless you've considered every possible source of leakage or seepage, that old bugaboo water finds every little pinhole, opening, or crack, gets inside, soaks up the wood, thus adding a lot of weight, and may even get into your radio system and short it out. So, when designing a plane that's going to operate off of water, make water protection one of your prime concerns. Water invasion of the wing and stabilizer surfaces is equally troublesome - particularly if water gets in one wing panel and not the other.

With all of these things in mind, I thought I'd try to design an amphibian that would minimize the water problem, yet be very easy to build. It also should take advantage of some of the new products which are commercially available. Selection of the first commercially available items was easy. I would design the model around the Midwest foam wing and stab combination. I had flown several models which used the foam wing, and its 44 in span was just right for what I wanted. By selecting this wing and stab combo, the problem of water seepage was instantly solved insofar as the flying surfaces were concerned. And there was the side benefit of not having to build a wing or a stab, thus eliminating about one third of the construction time. I'll discuss the other commercial items as they come up during the construction sequence..."

Supplementary file notes

Article pages, text and pics, thanks to hlsat.

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