Ekranoplan was Re: GEV capabilities

On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, Adrian Johnson wrote:
> Tom Anderson big fool, he write:
> >not quite; it still has the advantage of the ground effect, which
makes
> >flight far easier than in the free-flight regime.

> Well, almost.  This is maybe straying a bit far from the point of the
list,
> but the "ground effect" in "ground effect vehicle" (al la hovercraft)
is
> different from the "ground effect" which makes flight more efficient
close
> to the ground.

ah. i'll stick to power armour in future ... i seem to remember that the
ground effect applies to helicopters, but that must be the aircraft
edition of the ground effect; that'll teach me to generalise.

> Where this gets interesting is with the development of transport
vehicles
> designed specifically to use the aerodynamic aspects of "ground
effect".

okay, hands up all brits who saw the Equinox on channel 4 all about
these!

we saw the soviet effort, called an Ekranoplan, which was the first one,
and invented by the guy who invented the hydrofoil (sort of), plus a US
effort using soviet engineers and german and japanese efforts too. the
germans are way ahead here - their design is far cleverer and cheaper.

>  research that the Soviets used in the '80s to develop a
> military transport version of this type of craft.  Theirs was BIG (I
think
> roughly equiv. in size to the cargo capacity of a Hercules
transport?????).

it was huge. it was one of the most amazing things i have ever seen -
totally incredible. it had a huge bank of engines for takeoff, but once
it
was going it just needed two little ones. far more efficient than a
plane.

>  It was part of a tech. development program for this technology.  I
believe
> the objective was eventually to design craft big enough to have the
> carrying capacity of small transport ships, but with speeds similar to
> aircraft (say, carry 1000 tons at 140 mph across the Bering
strait...).

i think they got up to a few hundred tonnes. there was also an SSM
version
for use against ships; fly in under radar, launch, turn around and
outrun
most of your pursuers. amazing stuff.

there is one more ekranoplan in the works - bigger than all the previous
ones. however, it may never be completed.

> The Soviet craft had jet engines, and was supposedly successful.  I
don't
> remember what the results of the program were - certainly we don't see
the
> tech used anywhere

the design bureau that made them has gone commercial - you can buy them.

> See any applicability in the GZG universe for this technology?

in ds2, when mobility types of riverine craft are discussed, it is
written
that they may be (and i paraphrase) "convetional hovercraft, Rigid Side
Wall hovercraft, WIG (Wing In Ground-effect) machines or even small
hydrofoils.". a WIG machine is exactly what we are talking about here.

>  Giant
> "ocean going" transports using efficient "ground effect" lift to carry
> armoured formations.	If you could figure out how to set one of these
down
> on land (be a drag to need a 10k foot runway to land and take off),
there's
> no reason why they wouldn't work over land - doesn't require water,
just
> easier to take off and land on water.

the soviets used theirs as an amphibious assault vehicle, with the
ability
to go rather further than just the beach ...

Tom