Re: [DSII] Sinking hover tanks

On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 06:24:45PM +0200, Oerjan Ariander wrote:

>But such a vehicle would not be a hovercraft.

Oh, certainly.

>Ekranoplans - aka WIGEs or 
>GEVs (the proper use of the term "GEV", as opposed to the incorrect SF
use 
>of the term to mean "hovercraft") - have no plenum chamber; they are 
>essentially aircraft with wings too stubby to allow them to fly very
high, 
>instead relying on the lift-increasing Wing-In-Ground-Effect (or just 
>"Ground Effect" for short) to keep them flying.

On the other hand, there's no technical reason why one couldn't
hybridise the designs; the Orlyonok, for example, relied on blowing air
under the wings at least to break free of the water surface (I haven't
been able to confirm whether it was needed in cruise mode as well),
which is a hovercraft characteristic much more than an aircraft one.

What I'm suggesting is that the designs are in a continuum, and if one
wanted to build a hovercraft with WIGE-like characteristics it would
perhaps not be the huge engineering compromise that, say, a
hovercraft/conventional aircraft would be.

R