Ground Effect Vehicles As Alternate Transportation

Wow, this brings back some memories.......

When I worked at the Shipyard (Peterson Builders, Inc) in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, back in the early 90's. We were building some of the FlairCraft prototypes.

The FlareCraft literature looked cool, like it belonged in a James Bond Movie.

This may be hard to believe, but we had problems of finding Test Pilots to fly these birds......

p.s. it's been awhile, but if my memory serves me, the person that was involved with FlareCraft was somehow related to the Helicopter pioneer 'Sikorsky'........ but like I say.....IF my memory serves me.

I would think flying only 50ft above the water at 300 mph is an enormous safety issue. I'm talking about large transport applications. It's not like you can turn on a dime with these behemoths. By the time you see traffic it's too late! I would think craft of that size can't stop too quickly either.

Surface tension on the water is deadly.

When they initially test flew the FlairCraft, it took off and became an unstable airplane.

With its inadequate control surfaces.

I just finished a glass of rose' and some slabs of sharp cheddar... after which I read this above submittal, questioning the WIG's existence. I am now fuming angry. Not at you folks or he that raised the question but instead, the market of disingenuous sales people that cannot admit that the companies for whom they hawk, are failures. I have talked to many of the best creator/purveyors only to find out that they are bankrupt and/or have such daunting technical challenges they refuse to acknowledge a serious purchase order. I am still awaiting pricing for several Aron 7, M50 Transports after answering one email after another with all of their questions respectfully answered. They are well aware of my ability to make the deal and reasonable uses of their product. I have been told that they are reevaluating the product and will get back to me (months now). I have followed and studied this market at least as long as designing/working on my personal solar electric boat (25 years). Without hesitation, I can candidly say that every company with whom I have tried to make a purchase has responded in obfuscation with the exception of two hover craft companies. So...... if anyone out there has a line on some company that is ready to do business with a product that is not steeped in 'reevaluation' pullease let me know. Bless you all for tolerating my rant.....(probably the one glass of wine). I am thoroughly frustrated on this one topic. The Aron 7 represents the current sate of the art but is, to date, unobtainable.

I don't think you can buy these things. There's no infrastructure, regulations, laws, etc in place anywhere that I know off which governs where you can "fly" it. I think the companies developing these things requested special permission for test flights over water.

I don't see this "taking off" anytime soon. Too many liability issues in my opinion.

There is no reason to be furious.

At PBI where we were building the a proto type of the FlairCraft, It was actually an investment (whim) by the owner of the shipyard. Our contracts were slowing down with the build down of military contracts. And he was half heartedly looking for diversification, in reality the yard was worth more as shore front property, and the owner was past ready to retire. And he already owned a good portion of the town.

The scoop in the yard was that the owner of the yard would receive the first one. A personnel investment (whim), you could say. Anyways, even though we were looking for a 'Test Pilot' for it, my understanding was that a pilots licenses was not necessary. But the stability of the craft was always in question.

And also as I understood it, PBI was not the first investor............we just took up where others left off.

Now, this was what you would call rumors at the yard, but I think there was a lot of truth there.

A side issue:

We hear lots in the press about how we now dress little girls in clothes much older than their age, brickbats are thrown at clothing companies for advertising such grown-up clothing for pre-teens. Just look at the outfit of the little girl in that Delta ad and tell me again it's a new "modern" problem

/rant

• Growing old is unavoidable.
• Growing up is optional.

_{Just sayin'.}

Would any savings in fuel economy be negated by having to take longer routes across the ocean, in order to avoid shipping lanes and fishing fields?

Longer routes, nothing; that should be no more difficult than establishing travel lanes and a traffic control authority. Taking a longer route is one thing, I am more worried about the 350mph hovercraft finding the fishing craft or freighter with the drunk captain or the broken navigation system straying into the travel lane.

My real concerns are: 1) high waves - they happen, rogue waves are a documented phenomenon, 2) weather - micro-burst anyone? and 3) does anyone know what kind of sea conditions would make a GEV ride, shall we say, bumpy?

It has been a while since my flow courses in college but by "flying" in the ground cushion are you really saving enough fuel to pay off for driving through the denser air at sea level? Yes a counter argument is that you can now design more robust vehicles, and larger ones, since you don't need to build to "lift" the loaded vehicle into clear air, but anyone know the trade-offs?

Using helicopters as an analogy:

Hovering in ground effect allows lifting a higher load and enables the aircraft to transition to forward flight and transfer the lift advantage accordingly. Thus, you either have higher load capability or a lower fuel use under lighter loads.

I can speak from experience that lifting loads and hovering out of ground effect eats fuel like crazy and the added power requirements put tremendous strain on airframes which leads to increased maintenance costs.

Hooker

Conversely, and the Soviets found this in flight-testing of the Ekranoplan (which WERE operational, at least in the Black Sea, possibly the Baltic, also), once it's moving (and it won't be airborne even in Ground Effect if it isn't) it can "leap" to about 5 times it's wingspan, and gradually, on a curve similar to a powered glide path (gradual deceleration in the vertical, with concomittant increase in the horizontal, velocities) until it "floats" back into ground effect again. And my understanding is that a relatively robust leap (more G's than most passengers would put up with, but cargo and Soviet Soldiers didn't complain) can be made, such that the Ekranoplan, at 300 mph, could clear a 175' vertical obstacle from a cruise altitude of 50 feet in about 300 horizontal feet. That made for a very abrupt climb, and a somewhat shaky return, though, since it, of necessity, kept the plane actually climbing steeply at the 175 foot level, requiring a quick rotation to nose down, and beginning of descent, to keep from climbing up into a stall.

All this only from reading in such pubs as Jane's, and such other things as I could find in tech libraries where I worked in the past. All unclassified sources, but in classified spaces, so I can neither point you to them, or go back to them myself, since I don't work there any longer.

But Jane's is readily available for the last 30-40 years, and the Ekranoplan fits in that time frame very nicely.

impressive. I can see that type of action is possible with wing-assisted GEVs and not with skirted bladder fan GEVs like some short range ferries I have seen. I can also see that leap ability would make the GEV safer to operate in more crowded or littered waters and allow crew to react to sudden obstructions (like rogue waves). The pilots would of course need training in dealing with near-stall situations like you describe...

My concern with the efficiency question was this: by travelling in ground influence altitudes you have sea level density air and trapped flow. The whole point is that it buys you substantially increased lift, but you have to plow thru the denser and moister air which increases drag. So by travelling in the ground effects zone how does a winged vehicles LD ratio change and how much?

From what I read on it, the largest change is in the amount of power needed to fly as WIGE (Wing In Ground Effect. I think that might have been explained elsewhere, but this is a just in case), since it takes less than 40% of the power required to fly in WIGE mode, as it does to fly in free air. And the real gains in thinner air come in only once you pass above 15k feet or more, from what I understand. So anything between 5X wingspan and 15K feet is a no gain space, so to speak. But even once you reach the 15K space, and remember that requires the aircraft design to include the cost, complexity and weight of cabin pressurization, as well as all the structure needed to handle bumpy air higher up, and power to get you there, you still only gain about 8-10% range, or fuel efficiency overall.

So, the increased drag of WIGE, unless it exceeds the free flight drag by at least 35% is probably not going to equal the gains realized in lighter weight of the aircraft, as well as smaller engines.

Come to think of it, if it takes 40% less power to fly in WIGE, then that could be translated to a concommitant fuel savings, despite the increased drag, since it means you can fly with much lighter engines, frames, etc., and thus less overall fuel required.

So I suspect that if those numbers are as I've read, you never come close to losing in drag what you gain in fuel efficiency otherwisevby staying in WIGE.

I do know that the Ekranoplan (look it up, their are many good views of them on the net) had seemingly extremely short wings for it's huge size, which would reduce drag already, and if I remember right, it's payload exceeded in sheer tonnage, just about anything else in use that flew in free flight mode, with the possible exception of the Russian AN-225. (At the time, and maybe still, the world's largest cargo plane. Unfortunately, if I remember right, they only ever had one, because it cost so much in raw materials to build it. And since the Ekranoplan flew around 300-350 mph, which for any cargo plane is fairly well cranking out, there doesn't appear to have been any loss in time efficiency with them.

As I've noted elsewhere in this blog, the Soviets thought these might have a good future. Check out this link.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/81985/Caspian-Sea-Monster-Giant-Air-Ship-Hybrid-Craft?frmtrk=cr4digest

The blog includes some excellent discussion of the physics that drove the design and application practicality of these things (induced vs parasitic drag, and how that was factored into load calculations, particularly with regard to mass vs density, and size vs weight of a load, in low altitude "flight").

And from that blog, there is this

http://forums.finalgear.com/off-topic/project-903-lun-possibly-the-coolest-thing-youll-see-today-no-56k-42980/

which has some excellent photos of what has to be one of the ugliest air/GE vehicles ever built. Man is that thing scary looking!

But apparently if "flew" for them, pretty well, as, large and ungainly as it was, they were working on more when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Contractors love those types of contracts when they are conceled where the performance dosn't have to be proved out.

May be true, but might also be off-topic. And the indications are that the Ekranoplan in at least some forms WAS operational with them. I have seen way too much about them in Jane's throughout the years to buy that they were only ever on a contract to develop, and a failed contract at that.

I never had the time that I would have liked to look through Jane's.

But there is one thing with this type of vehicle, and that is What is the advantages over risks.

IMO,

I don't think it really took off, with the exception of "Oh, lets look into to it". And when they started doing some risk/benefit calculations, that is what killed the project.

But having worked on these types of contracts. There is one thing thats more lucrative than a cancelled contract ^{(depending how it is closed out)} and that is a "Change Order".

Change Orders.....OUCH! Right back thru the design validation from the start... Do not pass Go, collect 10 million dollars.... all for an extra 5% range..

I have to say, on military change notices, there is an incredible amount of paperwork envolved in it.

At the shipyard where I had worked where the majority of work was military. I can't recall the ratio between office personel and yard workers but it was pretty close.