W P Dixon wrote:
Also planning to build a set of floats and that's where the volume
formulas really get funky.

I just got my seaplane rating. I spent some time looking at the floats
-- it looks like the only way I could calculate the volume of the floats
I was looking at would be a double-integral. Elegant, but could still
be tricky.

One thing to keep in mind is the place where the float will contact the
water at various attitudes. If the contact-point is too far forward
(either because of the attitude of the aircraft or because of the design
of the float), you're flying a taildragger in a soft-sticky-massive
substance that is many times more dense than air... Scary!

Also, floats a have many effects on the aerodynamics of the aircraft.
The side area of the craft is different when it has floats -- a lot more
aerodynamic stuff happening in front of the CG, which can require a
bigger rudder. Also, the instructor told me that in a plow turn, the
change in the amount of the float exposed to the wind was one of the
things that makes the aircraft turn downwing. Lastly, the mass of the
floats would probably change the CG around a bit too.

-Luke