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Ground Effect Flying Boat
Stalke writes "A company called Flightship has produced the worlds first commercial flying boat that operates on the principle of ground-effect. I first saw these types of craft on TLC when they showed a huge soviet landing craft based upon the same principle. The first commercial version of this craft has a capacity of only 6 passengers, but a larger version called the Dragon Clipper will seat 40! Check out the videos on the site, this thing really is a sight to see."
If this gets to the stetes, would it be under the FAA? Will the pilot be required to have an aircraft pilot's license? The article is short on details, I was just curious if anybody has an answer.
geek page at KY speaks
flightship.net/technology has information on how this thing works...
Any additional info on why it works would be good to read.
What is ground effect, you ask? Karma Whore to the rescue!
From the company (might be slashdotted sooner or later)
A good site
More info, no pics.
There have been WIGs for 'comercial sale', on a per customer design and build scale. Some companies such as Airfoil have standard designs for airfoil types and construct them for sale.
At the moment Flightship dont apear to be offering anything for imediate sale. And you have to register with them just to get a sales inquiry aplication form.
At the moment, I'm going to class Flightship as intresting vapourware.
Here's a good site on how the ground effect works: Ground Effect
(they have been used to go over land as well - deserts or anywhere large and relativly flat.)
I do wonder about the site though it does seem odd to have comments like ...Since the current tends to drag scuba divers at the end of the dive out to the open water, each team should take along a parachute. It is only in this manner that the crew of the boat can be certain of finding lost divers.
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now to me that doesn't sound to promotional. Elaine R.
From the article:
After the trail period, where Sunland would sue the first four Flightships
They just bought the boats and they're already seeking litigation. tsk
those things are fast enough to avoid storms.
Check out this site for more info. I've also seen Discovery shows about this.
I think ground effect craft are the perfect cargo planes/boats of the future.
They are faster than boats and much more efficiant than planes. They do not need runaways. they can have wide bodies and large volume cargo holds.
Of course they can only go trough water, but you should not be using cargo planes over land anyway, you should be using high speed trains.
They say that Boeing and Airbus are both thinking of developing super large cargo planes, they should just stop and concentrate on ground effect craft.
I guess one of the costs of ground effect craft would be that naval navigation will have to change to allow for large fast low flying things, but that can be done.
Also maybe the flying boats can be made to fly higher to skip over things that are in the way.
A really neat page on WIGs discusses a little-known fact: That the largest aircraft ever built, Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose, wasn't actually a failure -- it was just late for the WW II sky. It was built to rely on ground effect for rapid stealth delivery of troops. There is reason to believe it was never intended to fly outside of ground effect, despite the fact that Hughes took a reputational beating for failing to fly at high altitude. This may have been a ploy to keep the stealth characteristics of low-flying WIGs obscured. An entire WIG industry would render any nation with large populations quite formidable -- especially if WIG vehicles used carbon composite bodies rather tha metal skin.
Seastead this.
I heard of this kind of thing many years ago.
The Soviets were way ahead of the game in this area as long ago as the 60's, they were called Caspian Sea Monsters because they were tested in the Caspian Sea, and looked like neither plane, nor boat.
This web site has a very nice detailed article complete with many photos.
They were quite the strange beasties back then, heres another look at them.
And heres the WIG site (WIG is an abbreviation of Wing In Ground-effect), which is also a nice comprehensive resource about these interesting vehicles.
The model maker Revell even made a plastic model kit of one, some years ago.
Apparently, this type of aircraft hasn't found it's commercial niche yet, but it looks like this new application might work.
If it don't GO... chrome it. ~ Frank Banks
Short overview of ekranoplan creation and development
Maybe it's because I just got back from the movies, but the first thing I thought of when I saw this was a guy in a green mask flying around on it, cackling wildly and throwing fire extinguisher balls at people.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The linked story is actually about a group having purchased 4 of them, presumably Flightship's first sale, but a sale nonetheless. Possibly still vapor since they haven't been delivered, but it sounds like they've already made the sale and received the money to build them.
There once was a craft from the Maldives
that could seat three men and their wives
have some advice for free
don't be one of the three,
or you'll regret it the rest of your lives
It is not a boat
Summer waves never touch skin
it is not a plane
An order is not a sale even if money has exchanged hands.
Well, lift falls off sharply once you get out of the ground effect cushion. So, if you trim into a gentle climb, you will constantly be just sitting on the top of GE.
As to fog, you'll probably find that they are rated "Daytime VFR Only" - like most microlights. In the UK, you can fly aircraft on a "Permit to Fly", which is the equivalent of a "Certificate of Airworthiness". So Permit aircraft don't need a CoA, but you are restricted to Day VFR. It's a lot cheaper, and is more suitable for private pilots who fly for fun, since you're less likely to need or want sophisticated IFR equipment on a light plane...
The first URL is already rejecting me because of high traffic. Here's a Google mirror.
I C: www.flightship.net/+flightship&hl=en
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:7cg6pQsh69
If no-one else is gonna say it then I will.
<Jonny Bravo>
WIGGY
</Jonny Bravo>
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
I did, like 500 times, and I still get nothing...
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
There is one of these that operates on Narrahgansett Bay, where I live in Rhode Island. I should say, operated, because last summer it hit a wave and crashed. The pilot and passenger were bruised, but OK - the Coast Guard managed to pull them out before the thing sank.
Ground effect craft are not new. They've been around for decades. The primaraly work by traping air underneath the "wing" and using that to create lift. As a result, they cannot "fly" very far off the ground. The FAA ruled quite a while ago that a craft that has to stay in "ground effect" to create lift is not an aircraft and thus isn't regulated by them. A hovercraft actually falls in the same catagory because it to flys in ground effect, it just does it in a completely different way.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
What's sad about the Soviet WIG program was the fact these vehicles were perfect for fast movements across the Baltic Sea to invade the Scandinavian Peninsula. Imagine moving an amphibious strike force at several times the speed of even hovercraft.
Unfortunately, the designers of the Ekranoplan were too closely tied to Khruschev (sp?), and when Brenzhnev took over, the Ekranoplan idea died a quick and untimely death.
With the application of modern technology, an ekranoplan could be perfect for island-hopping operations in the Less Antillies in the Caribbean Sea.
The ekranoplan idea died not because of the fall of the Soviet Union, but because the designer was too friendly to Nikita Khrushchev. When Leonid Brezhnev came to power in 1964, most of the ekranoplan ideas were shelved for political reasons, though one smaller ekranoplan design did make to small scale production.
This is an old technology. more information here.
Yep up until a few years ago channel hovercraft were regulated by the civil aviation people, but they eventually saw sense & now they are regulated by the maritime authority.
I've used it before for slashdotted sites
The Flightship FS8 is a craft that carries 6 passengers and luggage (plus 2 crew)
:)
6+2=8. FS8. Ok, makes sense.
the FS40 aircraft, which has a 40-passenger capacity
Ummm, does that mean zero crew? Maybe they only plan to fly the SF40 in the bermuda triangle
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Scroll down to Freak waves.
The fundamental issue is this. The vehicle has to be close to the water. As a result, running into a single large wave is a problem. The larger the vehicle is, the larger a wave it can handle. But the larger the vehicle is, the more it costs to build and the more it needs to transport to be profitable.
So you need quiet water which a lot of people want to cross fast. But the water has to be a lot quieter than you think. You see every so often several different waves of different frequencies fall into sync, and form one really large wave. This may only happen to you once per year, but even once per year is far too often if it happens under a vehicle that you needs several years to pay off.
So you make a bigger craft. Fine, but now it is going to take you even longer to pay off. There is no practical limit to the size of a freak wave. Bigger ones happen more rarely, but they still happen.
As a result this kind of vehicle, which by nature needs to be very delicate and very expensive, has always wound up on the wrong side of the cost curve. People have looked into them in several markets, but they are just too easy to sink in a freak accident to be commercially viable.
Of course regular ships run into these, and occasionally sink from them as well. But they don't need to be so light, nor do they hit waves as fast, and therefore ships cost less and can take more wave. this makes the risk acceptably small.
A similar product is being offered by Amphistar. I drive by their hangar everyday in Norfolk, VA. But I have only seen an XtremeXplorer outside once. The XtremeXplorer is in regular use in the Bahamas (according to the web site). And it looks like a lot of their pilots are Russian. They even claim to have the pilot of the "Caspian Sea Monster" (the 747 sized plane as seen on TLC). He even gives operator instruction classes, so bring your Visa card.
http://www.amphistar.com/
Kevin Smith asked the same question... Flying Car
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
but low-level flight over water? What's the trouble with good old boats?
WIGs are a lot faster than boats. Very useful if you are shipping perishable cargo. Or how about transporting passengers or livestock, where you also need to carry food and water for the journey?
I suspect that the primary use for this is simply to set new records - The Worlds Fastest Ground Effect Vehicle and the like. Commercially... well, I don't know about you, but as someone who enjoys spending time on the open water, I don't know if I want a bunch of pseudo-aircraft zipping all over the place - the water is an inherently "slow" transportation medium,
If water is inherently for slow transportation then why do ships like the Stenna Discovery exist. Let alone such things as powerboat racing?
Here is a WIG (wing in ground effect) craft built by a hovercraft hobbyist. It sure looks like a lot of fun. Also, I found out a while back that the FAA doesn't regulate WIG craft, so you don't need a pilots license as long as it can only fly in ground effect and not as a regular aircraft.
I wouldn't want to repeat that experience. The trip was like a bad 90-minute carnival ride. This huge machine was plowing straight into towering waves at something like 50mph. My girlfriend had to work very hard to retain the contents of her stomach.
As bad as that was, the hovercraft had the advantage of a huge rubber skirt to absorb the impacts. I'm sure there's no way an aircraft could handle the same conditions.
So, if it's this difficult to operate a ship safely at 55 mph, what additional precautions need to be taken to go to several hundred mph over the water?
80% the length of a 747 but fater. Only the 1st 4 were built. Volga shipyard's still got or the jig 'n stuff & will build more to order.
Here's a good article on them.
Here's a close up pic, notice the twin 23mm cannon dorsal turret
Here's a pic of 2 flying along side by side
Here's a rear 3.4 view
Top view
Front on, on its beaching bogies
Unloading a armoured fighting vehicle
On the tarmac
3 way drawing
Though it will most likely be capable of gliding considerable distance with no engine power.
Not exactly. Don't forget that it is only a few feet above the water in most cases. Thus, without engine power, it may have the best glide ratio on the planet... but you can't glide far when the water is only 10 feet below you.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
They're not under the jurisdiction of the FAA, they're under the maritime authorities.
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
Ok, I suppose that puts them under the same rules as boats. I don't know much about them, but presumably they would use RADAR to find their way about?
They actually don't use "RaDAR" as you high-tech gurus like to call it. They use a string with a rock at the end of it. they throw it off the front (or "bow") of the boat, and if it makes a 'DONK' noise, then you know that something is in front of the boat. if it goes 'SPLASH', the front of the boat is clear. Now, when this thingy is traveling at 300 knots, you're going to need a longer string and a bigger rock, with a stronger guy throwing it, but those are just engineering details.
:)
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
Actually a WIG has LOUSY glide ratio.
First off, IAAAE - I am an Aero Engineer. Glide ratio is largely a function of the wing's efficiency - and that is almost entirely a function of the ratio of wingspan to wing "chord" - in otherwords, the ratio of width to length of the wing. (Ever wonder why a sailplane has such long thin wings?) But to get a good ground effect, you need a short stubby wing, not a long thin one - you need a longer surface to "trap" the cushion of air underneath. So wing efficiency and ground effect are actually mutually exclusive. That's the main reason that you cannot get far off the ground in a WIG vehicle. The ONLY reason it gets up is the ground effect - you simply don't have enough lift otherwise. (You can zoom for brief distances, but there is so much drag due to the lousy efficiency that you cannot sustain high flight.)
So if you remember that glide ratio is related to wing efficiency, and that wing efficiency is awful in a WIG, you get a lousy glide ratio in these things.
But as "mpe" mentions, you can easily settle down on the water and slow down to become a boat.
One other interesting fact about these things is worth mentioning. If you see the pics of the Russian monster WIG (sometimes called the "Caspian Sea Monster", due to its extreme size), you'll notice the engines at the FRONT, up high on a winglike structure. Why? Well, to get "airborne", you have to get up to speed. But water drag is so high, and the plane is so big, that they cannot simply accelerate up to flying speed. So the only way to get enough air under the wings to get out of the water is to blow it directly there - so they mount the engines in front of the wing, so that the airstream can be directed under the wing to boost the plane off the water at a relatively low speed - after which they can start really accelerating.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
You might have noticed (had you read the flightship pages) that one curious thing is that they describe it as for "tropical" locations. I suspect that's specifically to avoid the high waves you commmonly find in and around North Sea and English Channel, for instance. This would work well in the predominantly calm tropical waters. (And, FWIW, big storms interfere with shipping schedules, too, so what's the difference? Higher speed and modern satellite weather info should pretty much eliminate all significant surprises to any reasonably prudent flightship master.)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last