TBD but I'm hoping those constraints are largely in taxi mode! When it's flying it's much higher up:
> Like similar “Type A” WIGs, the Viceroy’s preferred altitude is about half the length of its 19.8-meter wingspan, so 10 meters above the water. Much above that and a WIG can no longer exploit its aerodynamic edge, and loses stability.
I really want something like this to work, ideally so successfully that it keeps scaling up. Theres such beautiful aerodynamic efficiency from WIG.
Also a huge fan of what looks like a very smart lift generating blown wing, which also could really help this get out of the water fast, give it good efficiency
I guess you might be able to get around this problem if the vehicle can take off and land on a land based airstrip and then stay at 10m over the water. Otherwise that is a crippling limitation since you not only need the ocean to be relatively calm when taking off, but also when landing.
>> like this to work, ideally so successfully that it keeps scaling up.
There are hard scale issues. The wings must remain close to the water for ground effect to be a thing. But the thing still needs to bank to turn. That means one wingtip getting higher to the point it can lose GE lift, and the other lower to the point it might strike a bigger-than-average wave. The longer the wings, the less the craft can bank in a turn. Get too large and in-ground-effect flight becomes impractical/dangerous.
I wonder how much turning you could get just from adjusting motors. Especially if each of those 12 motors can individually adjust, I'd imagine you could get some decent yaw.
Also as per the quote which helpfully points out, WIG is typically flying half it's wing height. Since wingspan and altitude are thus linearly corresponded I'm not not sure (not convinced either way) that there's a problem (or not) from wingspan.
It would be cool to have a fast electric ferry service around the Bay Area. Ride your e-bike to the ferry terminal and get to the other side! Cool traffic dodge.
The sea state in the Taiwan Strait is often pretty rough. If WIG vehicles have any military value it's likely to be on inland waters where weather conditions are typically more benign.
The hisutton.com website is full of the recent Chinese naval developments, including huge floating landing piers and various novel submarines and ships. The pace and scale of investment is such that it seems they are building the capacity to genuinely do an opposed invasion
Do you have any good examples of tech that was immediately embraced without any prior examples or failures to monetize? I'm having trouble thinking of any.
I'm having trouble finding any onboard footage but, in the documentary I saw long ago, the person described it as being on a softer boat, with them bouncing around as if they were on a boat! I suspect 1.5m swells would be very bumpy on a craft this size.
Cavitation limits hydrofoil top speeds to ~60 knots. Although, there's a neat profile that just ignores top surface lift entirely [1] (probably at the expense of drag?).
Ground effect height is a function of the size of the wing. I'm guessing these are going to have to be massive to be of any use, otherwise you'd be so close to the water that you couldn't "fly" in choppy water, and with a strong headwind you'll need even more margin because I'm guessing that waves moving with the wind are going to reduce the ground effect.
I don't think headwind matters. Headwind/waves would just reduce relative velocity of ground. The wings only care about relative velocity of the medium. The downwash would be just as constrained as either way, which is what causes the higher efficiency and lift coefficient. Or, is my mental model wrong?
