Someone had to do it...
So I woke up to about 4" of snow on the ground which both sucks and doesn't suck because I wanted to go for a bicycle ride but it also gives me an excuse to put skis on something. In my infinite wisdom I decided to do it to a small plane and a quick look at the gear setups of the ones I had, the Q-tee seemed to lend itself to the task the best.
The skis are made entirely of basswood sheet. The bottom sheet is 1/32 and the braces and hinge block thingies are 1/16. The little notches (here pencil marks) are for the rubber bands and string to hold the skis in place. They're 4 inches long and 7/8 inch wide - theoretically enough area to have a low enough ground pressure for snow.
The paint color isn't an exact match; the closest I had was insignia yellow while the airplane uses cub yellow. I wondered for a bit how to hang it up to dry before realizing I could just use the tubes that mount to the axle...
Bottoms of the skis were covered in doculam to slide over snow better. I tried using clear ultracote at first, but it doesn't seem to stick to painted wood very well. Strangely I found that slightly rough skis have less sliding friction than a perfectly smooth ski, so I opted not to sand the bottoms of them.
The only fuselage modifications needed were two little hooks for the rubber bands and strings to go onto. By far the most annoying part of the process was cutting and tying the rubber bands and strings so the skis would both sit at the same angle when not on the ground. I aimed for about 20 degrees of angle which should be more than enough to prevent noseovers; I got the first one right, but doing another at the same angle wasn't so easy
I had to re-tie it probably ten times before I got it exactly right. I wish there was a better way to do it...
The spring loaded skis also have the added benefit of taking a lot of load off of the tailskid. It's very thin and sinks right into snow, but when moving it provides enough support to keep the rudder dry. I taxied it around in the yard as a test and the skis seem to work perfectly, no sinking in. The ground handling sucks steering wise but it also does with wheels so I'm not too concerned about it.
I didn't really even build these to a plan per se. They kind of just flowed together. I've never designed skis before in my life, so everything was pretty much TLAR based here.
Freddy hates flying in cold weather so he's bundled up a bit. I wanted to see if I had some nicer plaid material to make a scarf with but an old sock had to do.
Hopefully if I can make it out tomorrow, I'll have some flight footage with the skis up soon enough...