A Story from Hans Hoffmann:

"How to become a fan in waterflying"

When I built my Bee, I had a look at Andy Clancys video. I was inspired most by the scene, where the Bee was waterdancing. But I thougt, that twinfloats would look much better than his tail-float-version. More like a bushflyer. In a hobbystore I saw a picture of the Conzelmann-Wingo with waterfeet and immediatly ordered a pair of these floats. The first test with the finished SeaBee was risky. In a little fishpond I only wanted to see, how the Bee would swim. That looked so good, that I could not resist to through the gas fully open and after a few meters, the little bird was airborne. Straight ahead was a big bush, so I had to fly a narrow turn. This proved to be no problem for the Bee, even with floats. Enthusiastically I depicted my testresults to Tim Meyer-König, who offered his own floats to me, to make tests with them. Then a time with much pleasure and cold fingers began. After all, it still was wintertime. The first testsea was a puddle on a meadow. There blew a gusty wind, which caused very short starts,



but made landings a little bit more difficult.



On an other day I had better weatherconditions, when I tested both versions of floats. I first took the wingo`s. Because of the winddirection I tried a start in the short length of the meadow.



As there was not much room, landing was difficult. Better landings need a little bit of throttle. After several starts I overrated the Bee and ramed it into a bank. A reason to change to Tims floats.
At first I didn't mount them correctly straight, so the Bee had problems to take of.



But then I had several beautyfull starts with these nice floats. Altogether I emptied 3 accus, and it took 4 more days, to get the inside of the fuselage dry. Too much spraywater got inside. Nevertheless, flying from water is a great fun and the problems are a challenge.