Oh, those wacky Soviets! But not so crazy: Turns out you can buy a yacht based on this concept. For a mere $75-95 mil. (OK, the little one is only $1.5 mil. For the kids.)
Ekranoplan
An ekranoplan (Russian: экранопла́н, literally “screen plane”) is a vehicle resembling an aircraft but that operates solely on the principle of ground effect (in Russian эффект экрана effekt ekrana – from which the name derived). Ground effect vehicles (GEV) fly above any flat surface, with the height above ground dependent upon the size of the vehicle. Ekranoplan design was conceived by revolutionary Soviet engineer Rostislav Alexeev.During the Cold War, ekranoplans were sighted for years on the Caspian Sea as huge, fast-moving objects. The name Caspian Sea Monster was given by US intelligence operatives who had spotted the huge vehicle, which looked like an airplane with the outer halves of the wings removed. After the end of the Cold War, the “monster” was revealed to be one of several Soviet military designs meant to fly only a few meters above water, saving energy and staying below enemy radar.
Old & New
Uncle Dave, isn’t this just cool? I’ve some old video of these things around here somewhere, doing some studies on the fuel efficiency of a plane in ground effect. Very efficient. Pretty neat concept and some very interesting big iron.
I remember reading about the KM Ekranoplan was the biggest of these I remember reading about it in the early 90s. If I remember right it was capable of carrying a couple thousand troops at 250mph+ over open sea. It’s the ultimate in troop haulers and in theory could several of these could have crossed the artic bringing with them an impressive invasion force.
Ground Effekt is your friend:
http://movies.lazyeights.net/a319_start.mpeg
the same works, with a slightly less baffling effect, with a humbling C172.
When you’re lower than roughly 1/2 wingspan (measured from the wingtip), the drag is drastically reduced because the wingtip vorteces cannot fully build up. Means you need less energy to move, means full throttle gets you to go faster.
pj
humbling C172???? lol humble I meant 😀
pj
That’s all very nice… But what’s with the club music and low quality MTV editing?
#5, PJ,, humbling C172 sounds good to me, No matter how many thousand hours you’ve got, there’s always something new a 172 will teach you in strange circumstances like t-storms, hail, icing or night IFR. 🙂 Those monster ground effect craft look like they’d be fun to fly
I first saw this plane on that fascinating Military/History channel series on secret planes from Russia/Japan/German/USA. If the series reappears watch it. The Japanese stuff was particularly fascinating.
I had thought someone was going to take the Soviets up on the plane and use it to fly from China to US to expedite goods…faster than a cargo ship but bigger in capacity than a 747.
This tech has been bouncing around for quite some time. Several posts on this site give an excellent overview:
http://eaglespeak.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_archive.html
You can buy one of those if you want to:
http://www.hovercraft.com/content/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=34_53
$20-$22 K for the kit, with engine.