.

Whenever "normal" gyro guys saw Dan hotdogging on floats they would try to warn and caution him about the extra drag caused by floats .... plus if he got too much nose-down the drag would increase greatly and cause a forward tumble .... all good advice .... which of course Dan ignored. ..... Dan did not .... "suffer fools gladly" .... which means .... "he was not patient with people who thought he was stupid".

Until one day he silenced his critics with the following
..... notice my floats are very wide but not very thick
..... notice when I fly straight and level the floats are angled slightly upward
......which keeps drag at a minimum and even contributes some lift
..... and notice my float design has more surface behind the CofG than in front ..... so when the floats nose down in the front the rear portion comes up and sees more air which tries to push the rear back down
.... I designed the floats like a long slender wing & stabilizer mounted sideways.


It was at that moment I realized that crazy cowboy had some brains

.

Except that any part of a gyro below the rotorhead that adds any lift, also unloads the rotors... which is extremely destabilizing and dangerous for a gyro...

All he needed to do was make the top of the floats before the CofG come up to a spine, like a triangle... so if the floats go too nose down for any reason, the airflow cant push the front of the floats down and flip the gyro forward... that is why many aircraft floats have that 'triangular' aspect on the top front of the floats.

Also, I would think that flat bottomed floats would be more likely to 'stick' to the water... that is why most floats have the slight V hull and a step somewhere around the CofG... so as they gather speed, the floats plane on the front part of the step and the rear either is very low in the water, or out of the water... allowing a plank to 'rotate' for take off?

This is a good question for Lofty