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It's a boat...It's a plane...no! It's flightship!
Check this out! www.flightship.net
(if you have dsl,cable or satelite choose the flash option, if you have dialup choose noflash) I just saw a story about this on the morning news and it blew me away. This thing uses GroundEffect for lift! on water!! it only ever touches water to takeoff and land, but never climbs higher than 2 metres (6.5feet). It is registered as a boat. I think it looks awesome, sort of looks like a Stingray or UFO. On the news they said it is in Cairns, Queensland Australia for 6 weeks of testing, so if your up that way hunt it down. Now the question I put forward is, who will be the FIRST to model it?!! BTW there are videos on the noflash version of the site, I dont know what is in the flash version coz it was too slow on my dialup [This message has been edited by MrBungle (edited 06-22-2001).] |
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Did you find any plans/3-views on that site?
Also, any performance specs? |
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An Aussie was building two seaters powered by BMW motorcycle engines some years ago. Is this the same group? I couldn't find any reference to country of origin.
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Mad Bomber,
No unfortunately I havent been able to find any 3views, only the pictures on the site and a few more found by searching 'Flightship' on www.google.com procrastination inc, I think they are Australian, they mention their Australian ties a few times on the 'Shipbuilding Division' page, and mention their 'Flightship headquarters in Cairns' on the recent events page for february. But then I found this on another site: "Flightship is a Singapore based company that was founded in 1998 as a German-Singapore-Australian joint venture" I dont know if they are the same people you are thinking of. Its a shame I cant show everyone this mornings news story, it was awesome watching this thing 'fly' for about 5mins. It was very smooth, probably because of the cussion of air under its belly. |
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That'd be right, Australian inventiveness, German money and Asian business gumption. All our gutsy stuff ends up controlled by OS interests because the money mogouls over here have no vision.
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Also been watching the news lately, I once saw this site on the net that had modeled flightships of something like that, too bad I can't remember the site But it was all electric boats
Might be worth a search on the forums, because I think that is where i got the link from. Alex |
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That is so true, does Orbital Engines sound familiar? Ralph Sarich? our governement wanted nothing to do with him, shame. I think its Mercury Marine that pumps money into them now.
How about Purge Force speed controllers? About 10 or more years ago these Australian designed and made ESC's were like nothing else around, the first speedies I know of to be microprocessor controlled with a programing keypad built in...for a while, then tekin bought them out and thats where the tekin's got their keypads.(or was it Novak?) |
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Found the websites after all http://www.home-taylor.freeserve.co.uk/ http://www.du-groundeffect.com/
Enjoy, Alex |
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C'mon guys, none of this is new; I have an article regarding this technology that were taken in Switzerland in the 30s. I designed a vehicle using this technology for a guy in the 70s, but I used a long-shaft outboard so that it would remain ground-effect, ie, if the boat (?) flew too high, the prop would come out of the water, dump the excessive speed, and become ground-effect again. The guy started construction, but I have no idea if it ever saw water...
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Look up WIG (wing in ground) effect craft. There was even a thread on the model science forum a while back. there are basically two main types of WIG, one is the russian favored ekranoplan the other is the German based design you found (for the life of me, I can't remember the name of it, but it begins with an L). This type of craft is more popular in Western and Northern Europe. There have been several design studies and prototypes by many countries over the years, but for different reasons, they never made it to production. In college I designed and made an OS .25 DF powered model similar to the flightship/airfish design. I first saw the Airfish 3 on the cover of Popular Mechanics. Like the full size versions, I made up to initial taxi testing, but a variety of life factors conspired against me and I never actually got to see if it worked.
I found this website that looks very interesting. Links to aerfoils and design rules. http://www.se-technology.com/wig/ |
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Quote:
Pretty neat technology. I built a flying model back in the mid-80's when it was still fairly new. Here's a link to some 3D pics I created of it: http://home.earthlink.net/~mdsavage/fc The principle is fairly simple. It uses an extremely low aspect ratio wing with a radical amount of taper and washout. The fore rudders are linked to the aft ones and are used to help turn it at speed. Pretty neat stuff. Someday I'll electrify mine and fly (flare?) it again. Dan |
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