With amphibious floats, any significant differences in height between the
float contact points and the gear contact points seems to result in the
aircraft ‘lifting’ out of the water when the gear is lowered while in the
water. This is noticeable in varying degrees in most of the default float
equipped aircraft - even on the Icon. Some aircraft barely exhibit this
behavior (C172), while others exhibit it in a large way (Microsoft PC-6). In
all of them, you can use the simvar watcher to see it happening while watching
A:CONTACT POINT IS ON GROUND. The boolean value will either stay at 1 while
the gear is down in the water if there is a large difference between float
contact points and wheel contact points, or bounce between 0 and 1 if there is
a small difference. when the value is 1, the simvar A:CONTACT POINT WATER
DEPTH will also get populated with a value. I’ve encountered this while
configuring amphibious floats in our aircraft as well. Unfortunately, the only
way to control the apparent depth of float (or aircraft) submersion into the
water is by editing the float contact points. If the contact points are
positioned to reflect an accurate amount of buoyancy, while the gear points
are positioned to allow for proper placement of the wheels on the ground, this
issue can become very visible. It’s also noteworthy that while the A:CONTACT
POINT IS ON GROUND simvar is true, the handling of the aircraft will then act
like it is on the ground in respect to steering.