Source: 2016 Q3 Beartracks, Heath Sneller
This summer I mounted straight floats on my airplane. I’ll share my experience in mounting them and maybe cover a few items that haven’t been covered before in previous writings.
A couple summers ago I found a good deal on a nice set of used straight 3000 series floats. They are “Easy Lift Floats” which were made in Canada for experimental airplanes, I believe the company no longer exists but they were in really good shape and had a flat top so a deal was struck.
I had never mounted floats or owned a float plane before so I knew I needed some guidance and called up Curt Malecha who has been flying his Bearhawk for several years on floats. Armed with a camera, tape measure, note book, and level I went and looked at his airplane. Curt was great and let me crawl all over his airplane and answered all my questions.

To start the installation I ordered the aluminum to make the fittings that go from the float struts to the airplane from onlinemetals.com. I then used a table saw with a carbide tipped blade to make the fittings and drilled the bolt holes using a drill press. Next I lifted my airplane using a strap around the engine mount and put a lift under the tail wheel and removed the main landing gear. Then it was time to slide the floats underneath and start bolting the struts on. To get them in the right position I put a chalk line on the floor running from the nose to the tail that was centered in the middle of the airplane. Then I centered the floats left to right on this line. Now was the most critical part of the installation, getting the step of the floats in the right position. To do this I dropped a plumb bob from the center of the airplane CG envelope which I had marked with tape on the bottom of each wing and aligned it with the CG of floats which I had already marked on the floats. After lining this up I slid the floats forward one inch and set the wing angle of attack to 4 degrees and started cutting and drilling the struts to fit from the airplane to the floats. Note: to find the CG of the floats I installed the spreader bars and water rudders and then rolled the floats on a couple pieces of pipe until I found the balance point and then marked where this point was on the floats. The next thing to do was to install the boarding steps which I put where I thought they would work well and are bolted to the float struts.

Now it was time to remove the tail wheel and install a fin on the tail. Curt told me he tried flying without one and wouldn’t do it again, this was all the information I needed so I copied what he did. This included bolting a ¼” x 1” x 30 “ piece of aluminum with Adel clamps to the tail hold grab handles and then bolting the front of the fin to this and the rear of the fin to the tail spring clamp mount. I was unsure about the size of the fin I needed so I used approximately the same size and shape as Curt’s and made one out of ½” marine plywood then primed and painted it to match the airplane. The reason for using wood is that it is easy to change the size and shape and once you get this figured out you can make a permanent lighter one out of tubing and fabric. After this it was time to make and rig the water rudder cables which was fairly straight forward and easy to do.
The final step was the weight and balance. After draining all of the useable fuel and placing some borrowed scales under the floats I was anxious to see what it was. Well it turned out pretty good, my new empty weight is 1,636lbs and the new CG is 11.4”. My CG stayed exactly the same as it is on wheels and I have a useful load on floats of 1,064lbs. (Note that the Max Gross weight can increase to 2700 pounds on floats)
Now came the real test, flying it. It flies just like it did before and handles just fine in the water, I did not have to make any changes to the rigging or to the added fin. It did slow down around 10 mph though. I did not have my float plane rating before this project and was able to do my training and take my check ride in the airplane which was kind of neat. As far as taking off I have found that setting the flaps to 3 notches provides the shortest takeoffs. I tried takeoffs with no flaps and adding flaps after you get on the step and none of which were as short as just setting and leaving in 3 notches from the beginning. I talked to Curt to see what he uses and he too uses this technique. One thing I have found out flying on floats with a Lycoming 0-540 is the CHT’s run 20-30 degrees warmer. I do have some things that I could change with my engine baffles to try and bring them down a little. The big question, how short does it take off? Well short enough, with my family of 4 and almost full tanks on a 85 degree day and little or no wind I can get it off in 15-18 seconds. I live on a small lake that’s around 3,000ft from shore to shore and with the whole family it’s not even remotely an issue. One item that I was unsure about was my prop. It’s a fixed pitch Catto 3 blade that I’ve used on wheels for several years and I thought I would try flying on floats with it before trying something different, so far it has given decent performance and I’m just going to keep using it for both wheels and floats.
This year my goal was to do the initial installation, test it out, and give my family some rides which I did. Next year the goal is to start taking some fishing trips up north. Following Curt Malecha’s advice and techniques I was able to build a float plane that worked right away and one that will provide good performance for years to come.