My efforts at converting to water planes has been rather fraught and, in many ways, echoes the tribulations I experienced when starting flying radio control.
Firstly trying to find suitable venues has been a challenge in itself; too many people, too close to houses, too far to walk from the car or locations only occasionally accessible. And, with the Trainstar needing a fair bit of headway to get airborne, the size of the lake needs to be quite generous.
The Trainstar seaplane is also not the easiest to take off or fly, in large due to the oversize floats making it marginally powered. Additionally, the Trainstar is skittish on launch which, when combined with its gravid nature as a seaplane, make getting it airborne a bit of a hit and miss affair.
Additionally, I've discovered that the cause of the Trainstar stalling and consequently nose-diving into the lake were due to the cable for water rudder sticking, providing no rudder input during left turns. I am in the process of resolving this by adding a waterproof servo directly onto the float, a much better system but which I hadn't adopted initially to avoid having to cut into the floats.
Incidentally, the ESC didn't survive it's inebriation, becoming smoking hot to the extent it unsoldered one of the motor leads. This did, however, provided an opportunity to utilise a spare 35A ESC I've had sitting on my spares shelf for ages...
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