ekranoplan A WIG

[pipme]

For Adam : - Lookat aerodynamics section, para Chord dominated ground effect This is an interesting spin on our F1 ground effect downforce posts, this shows how the opposite, ie ground cushion was utilised. click for more

KM In High speed cruise

The KM (Russian abbreviation for prototype ship)
This largest ever built ground effect vehicle was designed in 1963-1964, construction was completed in 1965. The KM's maiden flight was on 18 October 1966, at that time it had manual controls! The KM provided lots of useful data on large scale WIG vehicles. Although only one KM has been built, there are many photo's of the KM with different tail numbers ( 1 to 8 ). The numbers indicate the different test phases, some of the changes to the craft were quite big, like wing span (32-40m) and length (92-106m) variations. The max weight varied from 495 to 540 ton.

Actually saw this on TV not so long ago, docu ....
We, in the west, were a little alarmed at this craft, when detected, apparently was to be used against shipping ... a frightening prospect at the time.

P

 

[AdamW]

Ah, the Caspian Sea Monster! Impressive craft. They were going to make them in the thousand tonne range, and use them to move troops around at high speed en masse too. They were amphibious, you could fly them over land as well but the problem with land is it isn't so level as water and has buildings on it!

For anyone who has never seen one of these before, they flew using the "wing in ground effect". This is the effect where a cushion of air forms underneath the wing and "floats" it. Makes landing a plane more difficult, but smoother (why aeroplanes land nose upwards). It also makes flying Tornado quickly at low altitude quite difficult!

Anyway, if you look at the nose of the ekranoplan, you will see 6 or 8 whacking big jet engines: these were required to get enough speed up to lift the thing off the water!

The Russians came up with some cool shizzle over the cold war. The Ekranoplan, the Mi-12 helicopter

Not to mention some very cool fighters and bombers, including the Mig-25: an interceptor that gave the West a case of brown trousers when it was clocked at Mach 3.2 in 1973. Turns out that if you fly them above M2.8 the engines (which were designed to power cruise missiles) start to overrun and you end up flying very fast for a while, then the engines need replacing! Designed to intercept SR-71s but never came close (relative closing speed of potentially 4000mph!)

 

[kendor]

It was a case of "Blackbird fly, into the light of a dark black night"