Ekranoplan

[ujjawal]

I saw the microwave airplane video and felt that the plane was perhaps flying in ground effect.
Ground effect is a strange phenomena that increases lift and reduces drag when a plane with very wide wings(large chord length) is flown very low( less than chord length altitude). Such vehicles have been attempted by Russians and they named them ekranoplans.

I thought if a crazy heavy plane with wide and short wings and low power could be attempted. Although I would like to warn of a different CG placement as a plane that flies well in free flight experiences a pitching down motion when brought in ground effect. so the plane should be slightly tail heavy.

 

[MrClean]

Once upon a time I had about 20 hours in Full Sized Sailplanes. Get one of those on down into ground effect you'd swear you'd touched down already but in fact, it's just ground effect. Full out on the spoilers please and let her settle on down.

 

[ianlh]

When I did some work back in the day in Russia I saw these monsters flying (Lun-class ekranoplan), awesome sight.

 

[Gothikon]

There's an issue of Marine Model Magazine from the 80s where a guy built an RC Ekranoplan, I've got it in a cupboard somewhere.

A quick bit of googling found these links (it's the same model):
http://www.grahamktaylor.com/models1/ekranoplan1/whizzywig_section/whizzywig_plans.html
http://www.hypercraft-associates.com/apracticalguidetowigmodels.pdf

The model featured was the Mk4 in the PDF, the one with the EDFs.

 

[johnmw]

these Kaspian sea monsters are awesome..

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