Slashdot Mirror
Amphibious RVing for the Masses
Diesel Dave writes "from the this ain't your grandma's amphi-mobile dept: Cool Amphibious Manufacturers International, LLC, is now marketing their
TerraWind line of combination
Motor Coach / Yachts. Thats right, a 42 foot Luxury RV you can take to, or in, the lake! With a not exactly cheap pricetag of $850K+, included is the full rigging of luxury home features: Granite countertops, marble floors, teak cabinetry, tracking satellite dish, and 42" plasma TV. Oh and don't forget the swim deck. If I can get one with an ocean rated hull, machine gun turrets,
and SVO conversion,
I'll have my own portable Sealand.
: )
A (temporary) mirror of the site is
here to lessen the / . effect."
Until they sink, like Boston Duck Tours did a couple of years ago.
Of course it's rare to find a CLIT on Slashdot. I am totally and utterly shocked. I mean, I didn't think there was anything but guys here...
It's what trailer folk can buy when they win the lotto!
Despite the fact I think the photos look like a hoax, I can't believe that this thing is too stable in water. It would appear to be very long and narrow. Sea sickness is probably a big problem with this one.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
When you want to dump your waste tank just jump in the local lake.
Phisteria are us!
Finally, my parents can evacuate when a hurricane or flood threat is looming. I'm buying my parents this as soon as I make $850,000 so they can cruise to safety while making cheddar cheese omelettes and listening to Willie Nelson.
Ok, all the /. readers that can actually afford this, please raise your hands... yeah, that's what I thought...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I have an amphibious vehicle of my own, but mine has an added feature....it sinks.
What the hell is happening to slashdot??
When $850K+ became "for the masses," I'll never know...
when you can do DIY!
This thing is an old milk truck trailer and has set out to go around the world.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
And for quick trips to the shore and scouting, it comes with a dinghy made out of a Fiat convertable. :)
I somehow missed making a connection. This is "News for Nerds" or "Stuff that Matters" exactly how again?
but its site can't. Its starting to take on a slashdotting.
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
I want the salvage rights until they work out the kinks!
anyone else picture Bill Murray and Harold Ramis driving this in Czechoslovakia?
"Come on, it's Czechoslovakia. We zip in, we pick 'em up, we zip right out again. We're not going to Moscow. It's Czechoslovakia, it's like going into Wisconsin."
"Well, I got the sh** kicked out of me in Wisconsin once. Forget it. "
sweet!
Since I don't have $850K lying around, I'll see if I can borrow hers this weekend.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Those water photos gave me a good laugh this afternoon. My cube neighbor and I were making up quotes for the guy standing on the dock watching the RV pull out of the lake....
"Prices from the $850,000's"
Please to note the 'from'. Eek!
For that price, I'd expect the weapons systems to be included (with ammo). Forget Sealand, I'm thinking more along the lines of Damnation Alley! Ohh, the choice of bumperstickers for one of those babies..."Tailgaters will be shot," "I brake for NOBODY," etc.
The cubans have had those for years;
http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=69190 (Norwegian, but the picture should suffice)
CAPS LOCK IS LIKE CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL!
the Shuttle Bike kit.
I have one : it's great fun for much less than $850K, and you can go on the "bridge" without opening a door and sinking the vehicle in the process.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
[music]Junkyard Wars[/music]
What is wrong with you people! Are you so afraid of the great outdoors that you can't spend a couple of weeks without your Pop-Tart-O-Matic?
Geez, if they're going to charge US$850K per RV, you'd think they'd shell out an few extra bucks for a spiffier website...
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Does it have a USB interface?
Granite countertops, marble floors, teak cabinetry, tracking satellite dish, and 42" plasma TV?
You youngsters have it so easy these days. Back in my time our cars would only go on land. If we wanted to travel across water we would lash a few logs together with our bare hands. We didn't have no blinkin' plasma TV either, all we had for entertainment was a deck of cards, and we only had 3 suits! Amphibious RV...Jesus Christ...
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Is this a picture of it? ;)
Wort Wort Wort!
I nominate the first group of people to pay $1million+ for one of these and attempt to take it out into water for a Darwin Award, after they dredge for their bodies.
personal jet anyone?
They're using special versions of the Terra-Hydra, http://www.camillc.com/, as tour buses in the Philadelphia area. They take you crusiing on the Delaware river and then drive around town. Pretty cool if you ask me. I don't know if the tour is any good, since I haven't done it, but it's definitely a cool idea.
Did somebody manage to mirror the mirror? No really!
There is no patch for stupidity
Visit my blog
...that the moderation points I have, don't work to mod down the story as "Off-Topic"
please excuse my apathy
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/cu ba/6370341.htm
"the operation timed out when connecting to www.terrawind.com"
"the operation timed out when connecting to www linkscape.net"
kickass, the slashdot effect scales!
affiliate linkage? I assume this got a good review?
Here's some cubans in there amphibian.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
Isn't it enough that we have to deal with these RV owners when they are blocking traffic on land, now we've got to deal with them on water too. Remember when a VW bus counted as an RV... and I getting too old or something?
It certainly was temporary.
~Blake
I'll be impressed when I can have my Winnebago fly around in space and get chased by a giant transforming vacuum... at ludicrous speed!
"Springfield . . . number one in aquacar production!"
Cubans in a '51 Chevy "boat"
Sorry, no link. I just saw on CNN, a big rig truck modified to become a slow-moving boat. It made it to about 20 miles off the coast before the passengers were retrieved and returned to Cuba. I wish they would have made it to the USA. America needs more ingeniously creative people.
void
I bet Noah could have used one of these....
</religion>
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
If that's not a challenge, I don't know what is.
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
We sunk it.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
You all did exactly what good little do-bees do...you said "I'm not going to slashdot the site, I'll use the mirror!"...
A few thousand "I'll"s later and the mirror is dead, while the original site lives on. Congratulations.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
...and it needs a bigger wireless antenna
It's pretty bad when you can slashdot both the main site *and* the mirror...
Now if they made this in a few other sizes, we can have a real-life game of battleship played out in a lake near you!!!
Hey, I figure if you have $850K to burn, might as well do something destructive with it.
Uh huh huh uh huhhuh...let's break something.
Okay, now THERE'S the Damnation Alley version! Right on. Just add weapons, and you're all set!
Yarr
This RV is really.......Yarr
</sea_captain>
or:
<cletus the slack jawed yocal>
Hey Brandine, go scrape off some of them there barney-cools so's that we can have some of that thur fancy seafood likes they have at thu happy eater...
</cletus the slack jawed yocal>
Burma?
But does it run SCO/Linux?
Now it won't just be caravans of American motor homes holding up me up when I go fishing for rainbows in the Cariboo lakes. You will be able to get in traffic jams on our lakes as well! Personal water craft are bad enough but this is rediculous. You can bet someone will bring out a cheaper version for fishing with this contraption. Transport Canada will most likely be pressured into alowing it! I think will go out and put out some well placed dead heads.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Attach a few dozen 55 gallon drums to a 1951 chevy flatbed truck and set out to the US. They probably would have made it to if they wern't intercepted. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/6368557.htm
"Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
AND WE LIKED IT!!!
Great all that happens when you post a mirror on slahsdot is instead of one site with a slashdot effect you have two!
Some guy travelled around the world in a GPA, which is basically an amphibious World War II jeep. He named his vehicle "Half-Safe."
He wrote a book about it called "The Other Half of Half-Safe."
... like these inventive Cubans.
Looks like grehound bus which run into the lake.
Yeah, I've seen this on the Wild Thornberries!
...uh...
not that I watch the show, mind you. It's for my kid. Yeah. Thats it.
Please put the mirror link ahead of the real site link!
:-) -- and we do open a new tab loading the page in background.
Many of us (ok, maybe just me) use modern browsers -- i.e., anything but IE
Then, and just then, we finish reading the note to see a mirror was provided.
And we say: DOH!
Everyone beat me to the Cuban thing!
And I thought I had an exclusive on that.
I have a '51 Chevy that seats a dozen and will do 13 knots with a good breeze.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
You. Rich asshole. You thought this was a great idea. You're rich enough to buy one and not notice the cost. You're obsecenely rich enough to no longer think of better ways to spend your money, even better toys and ways to blow cash, let alone doing something useful with it like charity.
Up against the wall.
good job, you beat me to it! thats the first thing I thought of
Lakes and watter can drive on cars...
--outstanding effort and a really cool ride!
f es pecial/halfsafe.html
The DIY effort reminded me of something. Some friends of friends of mine did this "round the world" amphibious vehicle trip a long time ahgo, here is the url I luckily found via google..
http://www.amphibiousvehicle.net/amphi/H/halfsa
The book about it is a good read, BTW Dang, hadn't thought about it for 40 years proly...
I wonder how the price of these things compares to a comperably equiped Featherlite coach?? The amenities sound almost exactly like what the Featherlite guy was rattling off on one of those Discovery channel bike week shows. Also anyone interested in extreme vehicles should check out Mercedes Unimogs, those things can do almost everything, from fire engines to light cranes, to railroad repair vehicles (those are equiped with a boom for unloading ties and steel wheels to travel down the tracks!). Also I have to throw in my favorite story that combines geekdom, survivalism, anti-government mentality, and extreme vehicles, The Consultant
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
is effectively the same thing, except for the Suburban and trailer parking when we're adrift. Ain't got $8500 much less 850,000 into my rig. And probably uses as much fuel in a day as that behemoth uses in an hour, on land or sea. Still, if money's no object...
I'm still saving up to get my very own Pheonix 1000 Submarine Yacht. I've only got $77,999,900 to go.
Send/track messages to 100K people: www.xPressAlert.com
sell one quick and buy some more bandwidth so we can see the damn things!
... what kind of idiots are getting Bush's tax cuts.
I think it's more of a vehicle for retired pirates.... an ARRR!-V, if you will.
Tweet, tweet.
Looks like I saw this in GMA earlier in the week... /. is slipping. Also I say "looks like" because I can't pull up the sites due to the /. effect, (so maybe /. isn't slipping).
Anyway, on GMA, I was absolutely amazed that the owner said it had a 20KiloWatt generator on board. Even more amazed when the interviewer (Tony Perkins-GMA weather guy) didn't blink an eye at that statistic. Most 3000 sqft houses pull less than that at peak load! Assuming they guy didn't misspeak, the only thing I can figure is the outboard engine is electric, in addition to a rather large hot water tank... even then I'm not sure.
The DSO looks a lot safer and cooler than that TerraWind (aka the combi from the Wild Thornberrys).
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
link
Hmmmm. Now where have I heard that before?
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
ballast tanks and stabilizers! Give it just enough to go ~50 feet under the surface.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
The real problem is the sweat.
Try that with a bike. Youll arrive safe and dry at your destination, except in the rectangle where the backpack touched your skin.
The solution is to carry the pack in a basket while you pedal.
OK,
It looks like a standard state-of-the-art RV on the road. Then it goes sploosh into the water to become a no-performance water vessel. Me-thinks the approach is all wrong since it is easier to design a wheeled land interface than a hydologic one - why not start with a decent boat design and figure our how to deploy the land_wheels?
Sheesh, I looked at a bunch of links offered in this thread and saw alot of boxy road vehicles modded for the water. Paradigm change time - build me a fast boat that rolls up the 405....
Thankyou for your support.
whatever makes your boat er... RV float ;)
My own Amtrac. Make that two things: I want somebody to explain why we had to use them to invade them to invade a desert country???!!!
Somebody has been watching far too much "Wild Thornberries".
Really, I haven't been able to figure out what you americans mean with those two letters! I know how it looks but...
This thing looks like its sittin in less than 1/5th its height under water. If it were ever to tip over in a storm you'd be screwed. Mild to moderate winds could probably do it too with that much surface area. Unless they added weight to the bottom to make it self right I wouldnt want to own it..
Tho seriously if i thought it was safe I'd definatly buy one as long as i could sleep in it while it was in the water.
...they do these things with style.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Forget that - get a load of this:. stm
"Cubans aim for Florida by truck"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3094795
"A group of 12 creative Cuban migrants have used a 1951 Chevrolet pick-up truck equipped with floats to make a break for the United States."
Surprised nobody mentioned this before, but this would be the best tour bus for bands that were worried about plummeting off clifftop roads into the sea while on tour...
Beowulf cluster of these!
this thing looks like it's top heavy. Would not want to handle something like this on Lake Erie. First bad storm and it would roll! :)
Gorkman
Just what the world needs: more and bigger means of destroying the little bit of unspoiled environment left.
I always wonder whether these people have children (I don't, but...) and what a favor they are doing them by leaving them a world that will look not to different from the New Jersey shore on July 4.
Or maybe the only reason for putting out the fires on the Cuyahoga was so that they could turn in into a wildlife free waterpark.
It really bugs me that people waste so much. No one needs to waste gas carting granite worktops and marble floors across the USA or anywhere else.
Be honest - no one needs this.
Fscking mad... crazy, all of it. Obscene waste of the planets resouces.
Anybody else wondering how safe these things really are? Looks to me like a nice side wave and the ting is going over. The thing looks to me to be about as wide as a 25-30 foot boat, but much longer. What is the proper ratio of length-to-beam to truly be stable for a water-borne vehicle?
Just a thought,
Bob
Someone is very skilled with the Photoshop here. This is a very good hoax. Great job! If this was real...it is so top heavy it would capsize with the first 2" wave that hit it broadside.
Did no one else think immediately of The Wild Thonberrys and their commvee when they read this?
Granted, the only reason I know about this (and how to spell it) is that (a) I have 16-month-old twins, and (b) we tend to have the closed-captioning on all the time, as a courtesy to our deaf friend who takes care of the babies frequently.
In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
-- Yun-Men
Were they intentionally trying to make it look like ARK II???? ( WARNING: LINK CONTAINS MONK-IDITY! )
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
What a waste of time and effort! These people should be solving world hunger, not building pointless toys for rich bitches!
For one, why don't they show any propulsion system for water transport? One would think that how well it could get around in water would be an important issue for selling an amphibious vehicle. So why aren't there any shots showing the propellers and/or steering mechanism? In fact, why aren't there any shots of the rear (except when submerged and/or so far out of focus you can barely make out the slackjawed yokel looking on)?
Secondly, the price range is ALL wrong, $850,000. Lets assume they have to build it from scratch, that still doesn't explain (even with the over instrumentalized dashboard) why it costs more than some people pay for a pretty damnned nice house, or even close to 10 times the price of a conventional 42 foot RV (with the same options, sans water capabilities).
Third, all the water shots are way wrong, they look more like poor photoshop jobs. There's no real distortion of the water surrounding the RV, just a little foaming around the sides. No evidence of displacement (eg; waves) that you would get if, say, you floated a 42 foot yacht in the same area. Also no waves from the back to indicate any form of propulsion is being used.
Sorry folks, this looks about as fake as those guys who were trying to sell gutted aircraft on poles as "custom housing".
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Now those morons who attempt to drive their 50 foot RV (aka, "Land Barge") up a twisty/windy Colorado mountain road --
WILL ACTUALLY BE DRIVING A BOAT!
What will they think of next?