On 07 Aug 2003 08:26 PM, Scott Marquardt posted the following:
Has anyone done it? I did the obligatory google search, and found
nothing in 20 seconds (so it must not exist, right? ;-) Obviously,
though, I'm not the first idiot to think of it.

Nope, you're not. 8^) Idiot is a stronger term than I would have used,
though.

I'd like to see a light plane with canoes for pontoons. There'd be
vertical tubes that would drop down (think a pickup truck camper's
vertical supports for when you don't have the pickup under it), so you
could taxi to shore, jack down the tubes (broad plates on the bottoms
for mud?), and detach the canoes. Go fishing for the day, then re-
attach the canoes, jack up the tubes and take off.

The main problem is that a canoe is a displacement hull, while you need
the pontoons to be planing hulls with a step. As I understand it, the
faster you push a displacement hull, the further into the water it wants
to dig, until it reaches its hull speed, which is the fastest you can
make it go. A planing hull is designed specifically to ride (plane) on
top of the water's surface at high speed, which will allow you to reach
a suitable speed for takeoff. The "step" allows the hull to rise
further out of the water than if the entire bottom surface was flat,
decreasing drag so that you can get off the water.

By the time you modified the canoes to act as planing hulls and added a
step, there wouldn't be much of the original metal left. Probably
easier to start from scratch.

Am I nuts? I suppose someone's going to tell me that it'd be easier to
convert a pontoon to something that could double as an inefficient
canoe. ;-D

Even if it were possible, you wouldn't want to try to remove a float in
the field. Normally, when aircraft are switched between floats and
wheels a large hoist or crane is used to raise it high enough in the air.
If you are content with an inefficient canoe, carry an inflatable and
folding paddles with your baggage. You should always have a paddle in
your floatplane anyhow. Alternately, lots of canoes are carried as
external loads on float rigging, if your plane is big enough. Beware, a
buddy of mine who flies floats says external loads can do goofy things
to the handling qualities/performance.

----------------------------------------------------
Del Rawlins-
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