Originally Posted by sanman55

Hi, I am new hear and trying to get some info. Forgive if this is not the place for this posting but I have to start somewhere..
I saw a commerical the other day and it had a toy rc hover craft but it was all fans, no skirt at all... it looked so cool...but I can not find it on the internet at all...did all kinds of searches...It had power craft on the box but I am thinking it was a made up name..It was so cool,, hovered about 3 inches off the floor and I want one...2 fans for thrust and 2 or maybe 4 pointed down.. It was a at&t commerical... Anyone have an idea???
thanks, sanford

I can only give you some sort of direction, what about thisthing?

http://www.walter-group.com/

The other thing is that maybe it's a sort of modified version of one of those cheap quadrotors sold by Walkera?

Marijn

So, I finished painting, I finished them both in plain white. I took the time to try some stickers on the aircat haha, it's not much but..ahwell. I then pulled some other models from my walls, so here it is, all the RC Ekranoplans I have build since we started this topic!








Greetings from a freezing cold snowy Netherlands!

Marijn

Originally Posted by hoverman

I can only give you some sort of direction, what about thisthing?

http://www.walter-group.com/

The other thing is that maybe it's a sort of modified version of one of those cheap quadrotors sold by Walkera?

Marijn

Thanks for the response, nope that aint it.. it was a toy in the background of the commerical, it was not modified....it was like a computer networking commercial and a guy was talking to his father and in the background you saw this kid playing with this toy..It looked like something from raideon of something..I can not believe I can find no info..
Thanks again for your response.. will keep looking

Well, I finished the aircat today, tested it on the snow and ran it into a tree

Not just like that ofcourse, I have tested it on an ice covered river and a snow covered field. It's quite amphibic and easily speeds up on the snow. I have my doupts about the total power though, I don't think the Emax 2822 will sufice for a water Take Off.

Anyway, on the field I made a highspeed pass with a short liftoff, after which it stopped reacting to the controlls. It takes about 5 seconds for the engine to cut out after a frequency loss, enough for the model to find the end of the field(and a tree).

The damage is limited though, only the left sponson broke off. Nothing a little glue and paint can't fix! Further, I think it's quite nose heavy. I had my doupts about the CG as seen on the drawings by designs unlimited, the only way to get it to be right at that position is by using a very high stabiliser angle. I chose a smaller angle, which allows a more rearward CG.

Enough to be tested!

Marijn

I took a picture of the craft and box from the tv set. Hope this helps someone recognize it and tell where to look...
see , no skirt....just fans...
or maybe where else show i post this...I am on a quest and will not give up..........

Well that sure looks interesting! I can tell you this, the body of the craft is exactly the same as these strange toy hovercrafts that can be found on the internet, here's a photo:



If I find anything more, I'll let you know.

Marijn

Exactly, but no skirt on this one...its somewhere out there.. its a toy like the rest but with just fans...you would think it being so unique that it would be easy to find...

Hiya,

It looks like the hovercraft toy that has been converted to a quad-type vehicle to me. If so, you may like to float your question on this other thread that is very active with many people who may have spotted your craft somewhere

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1219598

and/or

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1142429

Good luck!!

cheers,
Matt

Originally Posted by sanman55

I took a picture of the craft and box from the tv set. Hope this helps someone recognize it and tell where to look...
see , no skirt....just fans...
or maybe where else show i post this...I am on a quest and will not give up..........

Thanks for the link, will try...I dont think the toy is converted...Its just in the background and has nothing to do with the commercial, its about a father showing his father what his son got for xmas..a new toy whatever..

Originally Posted by hoverman

Enough to be tested!

Marijn

dang get some video

Originally Posted by David22

dang get some video

Haha I'll try, first I have to repair it

But, just in style of this General Ekranoplan Topic, I wanted to introduce a new WIG concept I stumbled upon. I don't really have a name for it, I think one could call them "Hydro Skimmers"



I have known about their existence for years, but I never really went into them and completely forgot about them after a while!

There is not much to be found about them, the concept seems to be thought up by someguy called "Jan Gielens", from Belgium Further, it's all linked to a University in Italy or Spain as I recall, and two Prototypes have been designed.

They are called "Shark" and "Breaking", one is an RC model build somewhere between 1980 and 1990, the other one is a 1 person vehicle.




Shark has been tested, and videos of it can be found on Youtube. As far as I know, Breaking hasn't been tested(yet?)

Now, the funny thing about it, and this is what completely took my interest away from these vehicles in the first place, is that the 'explanations' of how these vehicles work seem to be complete bull****!

Let's rephrase, I don't know where these guy's learned physics, but it's not near anything I have ever read or learned. On their sites, they are talking about..I don't know, a sort of energy equilibrium between gravity and the earths magnetic field..blabla? They say that this vehicle isn't doesn't undergo centrifugal forces during turns, because they keep the Natural Point(never heard of that?) under controll.

Anyway, I found a video of one of these crafts and was amazed of what I saw, it was a video of Shark, travelling at very high speed above the water, making sharp turns etc.



So, let me describe it, I'll try to explain how I THINK these vehicles work, and why I posted them in this topic. I think the basic concept of these vehicles is:

They have build an ogive Delta shaped wing, which is..well yeah a WIG. It doesn't have a Horizontal stabiliser though, they solved this differently. The CG is placed too far forward, creating a Noseheavy trimmed vehicle. Under the nose they placed a very nicely shaped Hydroski.






So.. as soon as it moves, the fully submerged Hydroski will start making Lift(as a hydrofoil at that moment, one can see that is has a wing profile), thus it lifts the nose of the craft out of the water. This continues up to such a high Nose-up attitude, that the Hydroski reaches the water surface and will start to work as an actual hydroski(aquaplaning), instead of hydrofoiling. The wing doesn't work at these speeds, so the rear end of the craft is still dragging through the water surface.

As soon as the vehicle speeds up, the ground effect lift starts to increase more and more..and lifts the craft(thus the rear end) out of the water. Therefore the Nose-Up attitude finally decreases, and the overall water drag on the craft is only located on the hydroski. The rest of the craft is flying in Ground effect..and this is also what it holds up! It doesn't roll to the left or right, because the Ground effect keeps it stable ontop of it's single Hydroski.




If you speed up more, the GE lift increases and causes the rear end to rise more, so the whole craft takes up a lower angle of attack. As soon as one decreases speed, the nose will rise again..and the rear end will touch back on the water.

So..it's a sort of WIG vehicle, beeing stabilised by a Hydroski instead of a Horizontal stabiliser.

Marijn

And some more info:

SHARK AN INNOVATIVE MARINE CRAFT AS SINGLE FIGHTER (1 min 59 sec)

Breaking- Monaco projection (7 min 33 sec)

The site for the Breaking vehicle:
www.aguiladesign.com

The site for the Shark vehicle:
http://geociti.es/CollegePark/Center/7865/shark.html

Marijn

That is a hydrofoil, not an ekranoplan.

Originally Posted by boredom.is.me

That is a hydrofoil, not an ekranoplan.

Dude, what kind of comment is that I man come'on there are normal ways so place a statement, and there is trying to pick a fight(like you do in many topics)

I never said it was an ekranoplan But, if you have read into the story, which I guess you didn't?, you would have seen that it's a WIG vehicle which obtains longitudinal stability from using a hydroski. If you have looked at the websites I posted, you could see that "Shark" is a further development of a Delta shaped WIG vehicle. They added the hydroski on the shark design, to improve stability and handling.

But anyway, I mean come ón

The reason I posted is that it has got to do with ground effect, and that I am quite sure that the other most active members of this Topic like Gabriel and David22 etc. are surely interested in this vehicle

Now, nomatter if it's a WIG vehicle or not, if it has got to do with ground effect or not, please at least give it a little bit effort to add to the topic instead of shouting something out, which isn't even true.

BTW, it's a hydroski, not a hydrofoil, a hydrofoil obtains dynamic lift by having a submerged airfoil, a hydroski obtains lift by planing over the surface. And, a vehicle with only one hydroski (or a hydrofoil) can only remain stable by using controll surfaces with gyro's, or in this case.... by using Ground Effect

No hard feelings, please, I enjoyed reading the topic about the 1person hovercraft, but please give a little more well thought through comments.

Marijn

Honestly, I didn't say that the way I meant it. It was more of an out loud thought, than anything else. I do completely agree that I pull the trigger too soon sometimes.

What I meant:
Although it does use ground effect to help achieve lift, it still uses the fin to provide a fair amount of the lift, which to my understanding, counts as a hybrid, and not necessarily a WIG.

The last sentence you said (post #341) comes to the same conclusion I did.

I don't see anything negative in postings things of irrelevance. (This is relevant though.) It only gives more and more ideas. (I know this is a biased statement, but I'm a good example of that.)

And one last thing. I learn by being wrong.

There are a bunch of numbers in the other thread. I'll go get it.
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1357245

Kevy-K