Ditchy,
"Operating a helicopter on floats is not much different than on skids."
Oh really. And running take-offs on water with Ma Bell's standard float package - right!
And how did you find the floats affected the handling when entering autorotation? Better still, how did you find doing touch down autos onto the water - much the same as skids on grass, I suppose.
Oh, and JE, while I agree that the individual sling endorsements requirement was gross overkill, I wouldn't rush to treat float endorsements the same way.