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Seagliders' 35-minute trips to Auckland closer with $145m deal (www.nzherald.co.nz)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm pretty sceptical about ground effect planes, there's a very good reason why they've never really taken off, despite so many countries and organisations giving them a try over the years, but I'd love to know what everyone else thinks.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Should be a lot more efficient than a plane, and able to carry more with a smaller wingspan and less power required.

https://youtu.be/yVdH_dYlVB8

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXvxJNOIXBsMyYPykdtoWRj1m5DRn4CNx

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

That's awesome, thanks for sharing! For your first link about the Soviet programme, they talk about all the issues, and hypothesize that getting these working properly probably requires larger aircraft than has ever been built, because these can fly higher under ground effect, up to 10 or 20 metres.

Given the original article here states these tiny planes will fly 10 metres above the sea, I am skeptical that they will properly operate under ground effect. Wikipedia states that the effect is about half of the craft's wingspan, putting it at a lot less than the 10 metres claimed.

And as mentioned in this comment chain, the nice videos in the article are actually all little models and it seems they haven't actually built any of these craft at full size, so the chances are pretty low that anything will actually come of it.