One fleet week, I toured a US Navy amphibious assault ship that carried two hovercraft. They might seem fragile, but they are wicked fast, and can carry just about anything.
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Cool vid except for the part where he makes an AIDS joke to sell earbuds.
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The image on that video looks a lot like a Bavar II:
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This is a much more appropriate design to try to shrink down and model in foamcore, I think. Less of a scale change between the original and the model, means the physics arent as far off either.
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Yep. Different manufacturers, but I’d think the very particular performance envelope would all these WIG deals look very similar. 
Now I’m wondering about a human powered ektranoplan, possibly with an electric assist to get enough power to get you out of the water. It seems likely that this is possible.
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Not just that but it was difficult to keep flying level enough even in calm weather.
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The Gossamer Albatross had a wingspan of 100 feet, and it barely cleared the waves of the English channel on its flight, so Im pretty sure it flew right in the middle of the Ekranoplane flight envelope
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Speaking of, the glorious Beriev VVA-14 (which could not only operate as an ekranoplan but also fly at altitude).
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“The Deliverator’s car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt.”
—Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson
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Although the high aspect ratio, high mounted wing was NOT designed to maximize WIG effects.
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Ultimately they weren’t, which is why things like the Ekranoplan are historical curios rather than core parts of all airforces.
However, in principle, the advantages would include things like increased speed and/or range for a given power plant and fuel load, and also flying very low in a relatively small form-factor aircraft provides some stealthiness against radar detection.
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Also worth noting that all of the significant military Ekranoplans were specifically designed for use in sheltered waters, not the open ocean.
Caspian Sea for the Soviets, Persian Gulf for the Iranians.
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My only question about that scene is how Pamela Mainwaring aged 30 years between Pattern Recognition and Zero History.
(apart from the stresses associated with working for Bigend of course)
“The Deliverator’s car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt.”
Hmmm 76 million kWh
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$ units -v "76000000 kWh" hiroshima
76000000 kWh = 4.2188367 hiroshima
76000000 kWh = (1 / 0.23703216) hiroshima
Ye gods.
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Part of the point of an Ekranoplan is that conventional anti-ship weapons are unlikely to be able to hit it as it’s going too fast, whilst still flying so low that most anti-air radars won’t pick it up.
Some were designed to carry troops, but others were built to carry (very large) anti-ship missiles. Presumably the idea would be that they’d zoom towards an approaching carrier battle group and launch the missiles before anyone knew what was going on:
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I don’t know much about Drones but I know a bit about sailing.
I can’t believe a drone can keep up with a modern ocean racer going upwind. It’s pretty insane. I guess the drone is much more efficient in a way, much less resistance and not relying on the wind for propulsion but it’s still nuts to me.
How fast can these things fly in a head wind?
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thank you. bad enough they have to force feed us the commercial for something wholly unrelated to the build, but the insensitive and unfunny joke was the point i made my exit.
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GEV and Ogre were (and are) excellent games. Although I only ever saw the version that was GEV/Ogre together, I think.
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Sripol is an associate of the Flite Test crew. The Flite Test guys are white evangelical gun enthusiasts from Ohio.
Their politics are unlikely to be good.
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