Drag reduction has been one of the key development aims in the design of transport aircraft. Seaplanes are inheritably of high drag due to their boat-like shape and exposed floats

Tigerfish has sought to reduce the drag of floatplanes by retracting and morphing the floats into a streamline shape below the fuselage. This reduces the drag by

• Concealing the boat-like shapes from the airstream
• Reducing the surface area exposed to the airstream

Designers have worked on the problem in the past on aircraft such as the Catalina and Blackburn B20.

Tigerfish’s development program to date has comprised

• Analytical desktop studies
• Small scale wind tunnel and water channel tests
  
  
  
  
• Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) studies
  
  
  
  
• Finite Element weight and structural studies
  
  
  
  
• Large scale RC mode aircraft instrumented flight and water testing
  
  
  
  Click here to view a video of the world's first flight of a retracting float floatplane.
  
  Click here to download a copy of the video as a .zip file
  
  
• Market feasibility studies

Upcoming development activities planned

• Continuing and expanding the work to date
• Full size non-operable pannier testing
• Detail design and prototype construction
• Certification, manufacture, sales, market support.