Ekranoplan was Re: GEV capabilities

> On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, Adrian Johnson wrote:

> Well, almost. This is maybe straying a bit far from the point of the
is
> different from the "ground effect" which makes flight more efficient

ah. i'll stick to power armour in future... i seem to remember that the ground
effect applies to helicopters, but that must be the aircraft edition of the
ground effect; that'll teach me to generalise.

> Where this gets interesting is with the development of transport

okay, hands up all brits who saw the Equinox on channel 4 all about these!

we saw the soviet effort, called an Ekranoplan, which was the first one, and
invented by the guy who invented the hydrofoil (sort of), plus a US effort
using soviet engineers and german and japanese efforts too. the
germans are way ahead here - their design is far cleverer and cheaper.

> research that the Soviets used in the '80s to develop a

it was huge. it was one of the most amazing things i have ever seen -
totally incredible. it had a huge bank of engines for takeoff, but once it was
going it just needed two little ones. far more efficient than a plane.

> It was part of a tech. development program for this technology. I

i think they got up to a few hundred tonnes. there was also an SSM version for
use against ships; fly in under radar, launch, turn around and outrun most of
your pursuers. amazing stuff.

there is one more ekranoplan in the works - bigger than all the previous
ones. however, it may never be completed.

> The Soviet craft had jet engines, and was supposedly successful. I

the design bureau that made them has gone commercial - you can buy them.

> See any applicability in the GZG universe for this technology?

in ds2, when mobility types of riverine craft are discussed, it is written
that they may be (and i paraphrase) "convetional hovercraft, Rigid Side
Wall hovercraft, WIG (Wing In Ground-effect) machines or even small
hydrofoils.". a WIG machine is exactly what we are talking about here.

> Giant

the soviets used theirs as an amphibious assault vehicle, with the ability to
go rather further than just the beach...

Tom