Re: [DSII] Sinking hover tanks

Ok, but despite the fact that you theoretically *could* build a hybrid 
design that would hover over both land and water, that is NOT what the 
original poster asked about.  They wanted to know if a HEAVY hovercraft 
which is NOT capable of crossing water, could skip across it like a
stone 
given sufficient velocity.

Granted, with the right shape, you *might* be able to do this, but as OA

(formerly known as OO) pointed out, your plenum chamber is going to at 
*least* be damaged.  And the crew is NOT going to want to be skipped 
across a pond in a brick.

If the vehicle (hybrid or not) is capable of crossing water, then it's a

hovercraft which is capable of crossing water, and NOT what the poster 
asked about. :)

J

John K. Lerchey
Computer and Network Security Coordinator
Computing Services
Carnegie Mellon University

On Wed, 25 May 2005, Roger Burton West wrote:

> 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
>
>