I can’t claim a great deal of expertise in seaplanes and flying boats but here are few tips.
Some are from me and some are from others.
Make sure that your model has a water rudder.
It’s really necessary for steering at low speeds. The
aircraft’s air rudder hardly works at all while taxiing.
Without a water rudder, if there’s any wind at all,
most models weather-cock and simply refuse to
taxi in any direction other than pretty much directly
into the wind. I distinctly remember some fairly high
speed impacts with the shore when trying to taxi
back a seaplane that I was flying without a water
rudder. I had an on-shore wind and the model
weathercocked into the wind, pointing directly
away from the shore. The only way that I could get
any steering was to use large blips of throttle in
order to get some airflow over the air rudder. Unfortunately, this also led
to the model accelerating. Every time I slowed it, the aircraft would simply
turn and weathercock into the wind again, necessitating another blast of
throttle. The resultant high speed beaching would have been damaging
had it not been for some fortuitously placed weed at the water’s edge. Why
didn’t I just stop the motor and wait for the wind to eventually blow the
model back to shore? Well, it was a glow-powered model and was actually
making progress into the wind at idle. I didn’t dare stop the motor in case
Sea-E–Dart out
the model drifted into an inaccessible part of the ͡