AFAIK, the step on the floats causes large amounts of drag due to the
turbulence of the air created behind it. What about a retractable fairing
to streamline the step while in air? It seems like this would be fairly
simple to accomplish, but I'm not sure how much drag it would actually
eliminate.

Richard Riley wrote in
:

On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 18:51:57 -0500, "dlevy" wrote:

Wouldn't it be cool to retract conventional floats?

Cool? I guess.

It would be complex - probably significantly more complex than
retracable landing gear. I'm not sure you'd actually save any drag.
Floats are big, when compared to the fuselage. So you'd have to
increase the size of the fuselage to contain them when they retract.

You'd reduce your wetted area some. Weight would go up. My guess is
you'd end up with an airplane that wasn't any faster.

OTOH, you could think of a flying boat as one with the floats
permanantly retracted and faired in.