Wig Craft

[foxworker]

Has anyone owned or built a wing in ground effect craft? If I ever have the time and funds to build one, I certainly will. Started designing one back when I was at Skyfox Aviation Caloundra. Flying on a boat licence, no where near the regulations restricting what you can do, awesome fun I suspect.

 

 

[cscotthendry]

Has anyone owned or built a wing in ground effect craft? If I ever have the time and funds to build one, I certainly will. Started designing one back when I was at Skyfox Aviation Caloundra. Flying on a boat licence, no where near the regulations restricting what you can do, awesome fun I suspect.

A long time ago, Howie Hughes was building a boat/plane type thingie. I don't know if he persisted with it or not.

 

 

[nomadpete]

There is a kit in the US for a single seat WIG which uses hovercraft method to get up off the water, then uses stubby winglets to 'fly' up to a metre off the surface. Looks like a fantastic fun device but would need a lot of space to play with it. (Google 'hoverwing')

 

 

[Deskpilot]

The problem here in Oz is getting permission to fly on sheltered waters. I'd love to have one down on the lower reaches of the Murray but.............

 

You can't just dump one into the local river. Not here at least. Also, what license would you operate under and who's going to insure you?

 

There used to be a float plane operation out of Goolwa but haven't seen it for years. Finding a suitable dock would also be difficult and expensive due to the width. Be like paying for a very short trimaran where you pay for it's width. Not likely that the 'wings' can be removed and stored separately. Sure, on real calm days you could take to the ocean but generally speaking, a small WIG could only be safe over 1ft waves and not a 3ft swell.

 

 

[foxworker]

Nomadpete,

 

Yeah it's a "hybrid" and the kit is ridiculously expensive and a lot of work to build it. There have been hundreds of different wig craft been built since the 50's when Russia lead the way with enormous craft with massive turbines providing thrust. Russians called wigs Ekranoplans, check out the Caspian Sea Monster for example. Australia built one called the F8 back in the 90's which showed great promise as a commercial venture, but like a lot of ambitious projects it failed and was sold of to overseas interests as far as I can tell. There have been other attempts to produce them for the recreational market. cheers

 

Deskpilot,

 

If you can operate a boat on most waterways I can't see the problem with wig craft if the noise doesn't exceed certain limits, since I believe they are operated under marine regulations as they are operated in ground effect only, that's what I found out when I was looking into that side of it back in the 80's. I believe you would require a boat license. As for insurance I'm sure if one really wanted insurance one could obtain it somewhere. As for the width I'm not sure if you realize that they are very stubby wings, only to provide the cushion effect you get I ground effect, check out some of the designs, many have a greater length than their width. It is very easy to design folding or detachable

 

'stubby"wings exactly what my design had, and therefore much the same as a smallish ski boat to trailer. cheers

 

 

[Marty_d]

I believe someone tried to set up a company to make WIG craft here in southern Tas a few years back. Didn't get off the ground. (pardon the pun).

 

I think they're a fantastic idea too.

 

 

The thing is, they're always flying right above their landing strip (as it were), so it really doesn't matter if your engine fails, apart from the lengthy paddle back to shore. The one shown in the video has a 70hp motorbike engine and they say it gets 300km range off 45 litres, which is a hell of a lot better than any conventional motorboat.

 

You'd save on instruments too... no altimeter needed!

 

On the down side, the view would get a bit boring.

 

 

[Himat]

To operate under maritime regulations is intriguing. Different nations have different rules, but maybe you are allowed to operate at least a class A ekranoplan.

 

The real trouble is that scaling work against a small ekranoplan (WIG). At least that is what I have found when studying different sources. As the ekranoplan get smaller the ground clearance diminishes and the hull will touch the waves on everything but glassy waters. Fly higher and the efficiency gain of a WIG craft is lost. (And it practically and probably legally becomes an airplane.)

 

 

[Head in the clouds]

In the current economic climate it would be very hard to build a business around a new recreational vehicle unless you had at least a couple of million to put into the promotion of it, and you'd want to be sure of selling enough of them to recoup your total investment and then make a profit as well. There'd probably be ten million involved in the process before you'd turn a profit.

 

Studies in the USA have shown that recreational vehicles will sell well if they satisfy sufficient of the thrill-seeker criteria and enough of the sex-appeal aspects. A sleek and simple WIG should do that but you'd be very hard pressed to meet the cost constraints that go with it. Those same studies indicated that the recreational vehicle retail price that the market would bear to enable large production volumes, and thus have a sufficiently low production cost to meet that retail price, was US$18,000. It's no accident that the median price of the PWCs, snowmobiles, cafe racers, quadbikes is $18k. And it's interesting that in the 95.10 thread someone yesterday mentioned that they felt a 95.10 single seater would sell if it was capable of 150kts and sold for $20K, and AU$20k = US$18k. That 95.10 machine, at AU$20k would probably also sell well if it did 90kt and met the other sleek and sexy criteria.

 

It's also worth noting that once someone has bought their $18K rec vehicle they very often end up buying another one, they might have a Seadoo and a Harley for example, but comparatively very few people buy one rec vehicle at twice the price and that is one of the main reasons that there are very few rec flyers, it's not that people aren't interested in flying. The main reason for sales resistance above that price is the constraints of personal finance, credit card limits and the amount of disposable income available to pay off the debt - note that most rec vehicles are debt financed for their initial purchase. So the average thrill-seeker can't look for another toy until the previous one has been paid off.

 

That's where add-ons can come into play. As with light-sport planes the major cost of a WIG would be the powerplant so why not make the WIG an add-on to an existing powered vehicle. The Hoverwing mentioned by nomadpete above is an add-on to a popular hovercraft, for example. I've often thought that a 'jetski' would make a good base vehicle for a WIG. To get the project off the ground and test the viability of the product in the market one might research the PWC market and determine which is the most popular of them (I expect it would be one of the medium-to-upper horsepower versions of the Seadoo), and build a dock for that model. The dock might be quickly created simply by taking a molding direct from the existing hull. An advantage of basing the add-on around the PWC hull is that they handle rough water very well, so if conditions worsened during an outing you will always be able to motor home on the surface with no difficulty.

 

The concept would be to park your Seadoo into the 'dock' and the dock would have the wings attached (they would be removable or folding for transport). The dock need be little more than an outer hull, perhaps with a foam core to stiffen it, and once the PWC was in the dock it would still operate much as it did before. The wings could quite small because these PWCs do 40-60kts on the water so there is plenty of speed to gain lift and they could be quite light because they don't need to be built to withstand much more than 1G, so make them 2G wings for example. Being light they will get broken regularly when people lose control and dip them in the water, it's better that they break than cartwheel the craft which could injure people, and you also then have a healthy replacement parts market. The after-sales of replacement parts is a vital part of many industries and for decades was the main way that auto manufacturers made most of their profit.

 

I think you could avoid having a spar carry-through, the wing roots could mostly just bear against the upper edge of the PWC hull, they are very strong in crush at the 'running-board' level and that could be augmented by a compression strut inside the PWC hull if necessary. The dock might also carry a canard for pitch control, or a conventional aft tail. A control system would need to be devised and there is room for some inventiveness there. It could have a normal joystick or be less conventional with a hybrid-weightshift method perhaps, where the rider wears a harness which is connected to the control surfaces and movement of the rider's upper body shifts weight as well as moving control surfaces. Modern cheap componentry might also invite some experimentation with fly-by-wire (FBW).

 

As far as the drive is concerned there is a grating under the centre of a PWC hull where water is taken into the Hamilton jet unit. The dock would have some re-inforcing around that area and have a folding snorkel which might be folded forward during surface operation but when the rider wanted high speed it would be deployed downward so that as the craft started to fly up out of the water the snorkel would continue to supply it with water for the jet. This would have the advantage of guaranteeing that the craft couldn't fly higher than the snorkel length and so no aviation authority would have any interest in it. The jet thrust works just as efficiently when exhausting into the air as it does when ejected under the surface, so there is no propulsion issue there.

 

An add-on which dramatically increases the scope of a PWC by turning it into a flying vehicle could realistically justify a price tag of around half the initial price of the PWC and since you don't have to supply the expensive componentry (engine, instruments, tank, electronics, jet unit) you could use quality materials and high spec ones where essential, the snorkel is an example of that, and still have sufficient margin to build a profitable business.

 

Of course if it proves to be a success you'd very quickly be competing with Seadoo themselves, against their own version of it, whether you'd be able to maintain your market share or not would depend on how good your initial product was, how well you established your brand (you'd need to be the generic 'hoover' of the vaccuum cleaner world, or the 'jetski' of the PWC world), and how quickly you could develop and improve the product so as to stay ahead of those who copy the idea.

 

 

[ausadvance]

a client of mine is building a universal hover wing with a 2.5 l turbo boxer engine out of a wrx sti. He crashed one toy so hes using the engine to make another. Universal hover wing think that with that engine it should be able to achieve 200 kmh! now he rekons he can drive this just on a boat licence an is convinced he has looked through all the legalities ad talked to everyone he needs to. but the legalities beyond what he has told me I have no clue.

 

 

[dazza 38]

I used to see those inflatable ground effect toys that got towed behind a boat. I think that were call stingray or something like that. People can get fairly high if they are towed fast enough. Then all of a sudden it didn't see them around anymore. I am wondering if they were banned or something for being dangerous ? They looked like fun.

 

 

[Marty_d]

How about an add-on (like HITC's idea) but to fit a motorbike? You just drive your bike onto the hull and secure it with the rear wheel parked on a roller connected to the fan. A linkage for ailerons/rudder is secured to the handle bars. Use throttle and gears to get up to speed, lean to use ailerons and turn the handlebars to use rudder. Maybe elevator could be on a linkage secured to the pilot's chest... lean back to go up, lean forward to go down...

 

I've always dreamed of a flying motorbike... maybe ground effect is the way to go!

 

Just had a mental image of a flock of Hells Angels skimming across the water. Don't think it'd work with Harley's though.

 

 

[Head in the clouds]

You just drive your bike onto the hull and secure it with the rear wheel parked on a roller connected to the fan.....

Many years ago I drew up a concept for an amphibious beach assault vehicle and submitted it to the ADF. I hoped they would fund its development. They liked it but pointed out that Australia was more into Defence than Offence and they suggested I take it to one of the TPLACs (Tin Pot Little African Countries - from Yes Minister) who might show more interest.

 

The concept there was similar to your suggestion but it didn't fly, and using quad bikes rather than two wheeled bikes. The idea was that the rear seat of a quad bike be set higher than the front seat so that a mounted gun could be operated by the rear rider. From a mother-ship offshore the quad bikes would be docked into/onto hulls which resembled 'jetski' hulls and the wheels of the 4WD quadbikes sat in indentations which had rollers in them as you mention, the rollers drove a Hamilton jet unit. The amphib quads could then hit the beach at speed and drive straight off the front of the hull blazing away with the machine gun. A bit mad but it struck me as being better for the troops than either Dunkirk or the D Day landings proved to be.

 

Just had a mental image of a flock of Hells Angels skimming across the water.

Never though of a mob of Hell's Angels as a 'flock' before

 

 

[Zibi]

Many years ago I drew up a concept for an amphibious beach assault vehicle and submitted it to the ADF. I hoped they would fund its development. They liked it but pointed out that Australia was more into Defence than Offence and they suggested I take it to one of the TPLACs (Tin Pot Little African Countries - from Yes Minister) who might show more interest.The concept there was similar to your suggestion but it didn't fly, and using quad bikes rather than two wheeled bikes. The idea was that the rear seat of a quad bike be set higher than the front seat so that a mounted gun could be operated by the rear rider. From a mother-ship offshore the quad bikes would be docked into/onto hulls which resembled 'jetski' hulls and the wheels of the 4WD quadbikes sat in indentations which had rollers in them as you mention, the rollers drove a Hamilton jet unit. The amphib quads could then hit the beach at speed and drive straight off the front of the hull blazing away with the machine gun. A bit mad but it struck me as being better for the troops than either Dunkirk or the D Day landings proved to be.

 

Never though of a mob of Hell's Angels as a 'flock' before [ATTACH=full]23615[/ATTACH]

I think someone has realized your project (although without the machine gun):

 

 

 

Now, all you need is to add a little wings to it as well, so it can fly, and it will be the ultimate off-road vehicle :)

 

 

[foxworker]

All great reading. Would like to see how it could possibly cost "millions", to bring such products to the market; love to see some sort of break down; we're not talking production like that of a small car 15-25 grand for instance, or mass production like other recreational products. I have a prototype, design registered, camper trailer 1/10 scale I built a number of years ago that I have shown a few manufacturers, small and large, to gauge their reaction. Each one has commented on the marketability of the product in a positive way but each one has also said that it would take some ridiculous amount of money to bring to the market, which is just absolute crap. Where some of these figures come from is anybody's guess. Designing products cleverly so that they can be produced in numbers seems to be so overlooked in Oz., I have seen so many commercial products made in factories in such archaic ways that Henry Ford would of shook his head. The workers/technicians know it, but unfortunately the powers that be don't, they keep throwing money in to try to solve the issues, but fail to listen to those who really do know what they're talking about, and hence, loads of money wasted. I love the saying, "fail to plan and you're planning to fail". Doing so can save the investor so much money. Also, when it comes to successfully marketing a new product these days one doesn't need to hand hundreds of thousands of dollars over to some wiz bang marketing guru, to get good results; these days the internet has made it a truck load easier to bring a product to the market without it costing an arm and a leg. Sure there will be investment needed to bring any product to the market, but pulling figures out of thin air without being able to fully substantiate is sooo out of date. Cheers all

 

 

[farri]

Ok! Iknow it was a long time ago and things have changed!....Back in the eighties there were two ground effect aircraft being built here at Deeral. One at a neighbours property and one here on our property. The one up at the neighbours was in part responsible for me becoming involved in Ultralights. As I was driving past one day, I decided to go in and see what the guy was building ( long story so I`ll leave it at that for now). Both craft were experimental, they had no plans to work from and neither of the two builders realy knew what they were doing.

 

The one up the road was made of metal with a 6 cylinder Holden engine to power it and if I remember correctly, a six blade, metal prop that the guy had made himself. That one never got off the water and it`s final resting place became the bank of a creek, branching of the Russell river, not far from here. They must have decided that it was easier to discard it there than to tow it back to the boat ramp. I`ve seen it there many times over the years when flying. By the way! Richard (Teckair) knows the guy who built it,very well.

 

The guy building here on the property had gone to Russia and been taken through a factory where they were building this type of craft so he had some idea of what he wanted. It was a composite construction. The real problem was that every time he thought he`d got it right and tested it in the Mulgrave river, it wouldn`t get off the water so he would change the design. Changing the design simply created a new problem. This went on for a couple of years. The guys son had always been the test pilot. Eventually, the guy thought he`d got it right and so he decided to test fly it himself.

 

With the craft back in the river and ready to go, he applied full power. This time it got off the water but soon as it lifted off the water, it went straight up and flipped completely over, landing belly up. He was wearing a life jacket. He had forgotten to put on his sear belt. (It may have saved his life) The craft had no canopy so on impact he was shot straight to the bottom of the river then taken straight back up,by the life jacket, into the cockpit area. Because the wing area was curved downwards to the tip and the craft was belly up, he was able to slide up to the surface, along what was the top of wing. (I went down with SCUBA gear to help retrieve it.) At that time the guy was in his mid 60 and after that he gave up and took it to the dump. He passed away, some years ago.

 

For several years, there was a 2 place ground effect craft sitting on the ground near one of the Cairns boat ramps. Don`t know if it ever flew and now long gone.

 

Years ago! a guy in New Zealand was on TV claiming that he`d perfected the design by computer programing. He was going to build and sell a 2 place craft. I don`t know of any flying but there might be some information out there, from the area.

 

Frank.

 

 

[foxworker]

I believe one of the "obstacles", to overcome is stability in craft pitching, which shouldn't be too hard to overcome if it is understood in the design phase.

 

 

[Head in the clouds]

Would like to see how it could possibly cost "millions", to bring such products to the market; love to see some sort of break down; we're not talking production like that of a small car 15-25 grand for instance, or mass production like other recreational products.........Each one has commented on the marketability of the product in a positive way but each one has also said that it would take some ridiculous amount of money to bring to the market, which is just absolute crap. Where some of these figures come from is anybody's guess............ these days the internet has made it a truck load easier to bring a product to the market without it costing an arm and a leg......

The 'millions' I referred to wasn't to do with your proposal as a one man operation with a build-ten, sell-ten type of project, I was referring to launching a new recreational vehicle (perhaps a WIG but not necessarily), with a promotional campaign that would bring enough sales to allow one to set a sufficiently low retail cost to meet the rec vehicle market pricing, having been able to benefit, from the outset, from large scale production. If that promotion only cost a couple of mill I'd be very surprised. The rest of the figure mentioned would be consumed by the cost of the manufacturing facility, tooling, machinery, recruitment, pre-sales wages, raw material stock-holding, exhibition costs, travel, warehousing, freight, demos, to list just a few.

 

If each of these people, who are already successfully in business, has told you the same thing it's just possible that they may be right. If I had a dime etc ... the number of people I know who have set off into business with a good product and a belief that they can manufacture it cheaply and differently from the (inefficient) way everyone else does it. They have all believed they can sell it for two or three times the cost of the raw materials. They simply haven't done the research and a proper costing. On another site we have a very smart man who stated that it doesn't make an iota of difference whether you use the cheapest commercial grade material or the most expensive exotics to build a production plane because the cost of the materials is such a tiny percentage of the cost of the product ex-factory, let alone the retail price. It was slight exaggeration on his part but very surprising, once the numbers had been crunched, just how slight it was. Needlesstosay none of those start-ups I referred to before ever got as far as selling a single example of their product.

 

I don't believe that the internet has made it any easier at all. The internet is responsible for the expansion of markets and competition globally and that has brought your competitors into your back yard. It's certainly much easier for established companies and networks but has made it orders of magnitude harder for start-ups. Certainly almost anyone can build a WordPress site these days but a good and effective site that actually has an effect on sales rather than just providing initial information and company news costs big bucks and takes specialist skills. Most of us don't have enough of our native language skills to provide the webmaster with the print-ready copy for the site and many of the webmasters can't proof-read either. A site with typos, grammatical and spelling errors is so counter-productive that it would be better to avoid having a site altogether and instead stick to mail-outs.

 

In 2007 I had an e-commerce site built, it cost $18k to establish, plus the c/c portal, and took 4 months of my full-time application to provide the content. It then cost around $4k/month to have it maintained and grow it. After two years and having spent $120k on it I shut it down because it had only just broken even and it wasn't looking likely that I could reduce the workload sufficiently to be able to get a life.

 

 

[farri]

I believe one of the "obstacles", to overcome is stability in craft pitching, which shouldn't be too hard to overcome if it is understood in the design phase.

It appears that pitch stability is the bigest challenge. I`m not convinced it shouldn`t be to hard to overcome.

 

Frank.

 

 

[Marty_d]

I'm an old fashioned type and haven't got 3D CAD (but very impressed when one of you puts up some 3D plans!)

 

This is a 2-minute scribble of what I'm thinking of.

 

A float off a seaplane (obviously size/displacement/load/balance needs to be worked out). Couple of small floats at the tips. Aluminium "D-box" spar & leading edge - top of spar meets over the bike and the lower part clamps onto the bike using it as a stressed member. Rest of the wing dacron with slide in battens (or aluminium, doesn't really matter).

 

Looks like you have to push the bike backwards onto the craft in order to leave the fan shroud & drive mechanism fixed.

 

HITC, should've sold your landing craft idea to DARPA, they go in for tricky stuff like that. Failing that, the producers of the next James Bond film...

 

 

Frank, regarding the guy who test flew the WIG and it flipped - I would have thought an accurate scale model would have been a good idea to work out weight & balance first.

 

 

 

[Head in the clouds]

I'm an old fashioned type and haven't got 3D CAD (but very impressed when one of you puts up some 3D plans!)This is a 2-minute scribble of what I'm thinking of.

 

A float off a seaplane (obviously size/displacement/load/balance needs to be worked out). Couple of small floats at the tips. Aluminium "D-box" spar & leading edge - top of spar meets over the bike and the lower part clamps onto the bike using it as a stressed member. Rest of the wing dacron with slide in battens (or aluminium, doesn't really matter).

 

Looks like you have to push the bike backwards onto the craft in order to leave the fan shroud & drive mechanism fixed.

 

HITC, should've sold your landing craft idea to DARPA, they go in for tricky stuff like that. Failing that, the producers of the next James Bond film...

If I could sketch like that I'd never have bothered to learn CAD - very nice!

 

It's a great concept but possibly a bit inefficient on weight and drivetrain unless you could figure a way to make it a 'transformer' to justify it all. By that I mean if you had a way to carry (or tow perhaps) the WIG part of it using the bike as the tow vehicle, so that you could go touring on the bike and set it up when you got to a lake or sheltered seaway, then it would be a very nice addition to any bike.

 

I didn't know about DARPA back then but funnily enough it was the scene from an early Bond film (where Roger Moore, or was it Sean Connery, rides a jetski up to the beach before most people in the world had ever heard of a jetski let alone seen one) that inspired the concept, combined with my first taste of 4WD quad bikes, in about 1990 in a remote part of the Kimberley.

 

Stability seems to be the subject of the week, I don't think I'll get involved this time

 

 

[foxworker]

Skyfox Aviation was not kicked off with millions of dollars, the owner at the time confided in me quite a lot and I can assure you it was no where near that amount. A lot of the money went into certification. Money was not wasted on expensive promotion campaigns, nor was it wasted on over flashy premises, we did with what we needed and no more and we still managed to produce and sell approx. 170 aircraft, keeping a couple of dozen people employed for 5 years or so. Skyfox Aviation was sold off in the end to a couple of very wealthy businessmen from Abu Dharbi who sunk a large amount of money into the company, and it folded up within six months. No amount of money would of saved that company, it was so poorly run and organized it was inevitable that it would fail, the staff on the floor could see it coming but the new wealthy management could not and would not accept that change was needed. My point is that simply pouring mega money into a business is not always the answer, good planning and strict attention to every detail is.

 

 

[foxworker]

There are two really good books, (amongst 1000's), out there that I absolutely recommend to anyone contemplating going into any business and they are

 

"22 immutable laws of marketing" by Al Ries and Jack Trout, the other one is "The E-Myth"-Why most small businesses don't work and what to do about it by Michael E. Gerber. Both great to read, especially 22.

 

 

[terryc]

I'm an old fashioned type and haven't got 3D CAD (but very impressed when one of you puts up some 3D plans!)This is a 2-minute scribble of what I'm thinking of.

 

A float off a seaplane (obviously size/displacement/load/balance needs to be worked out). Couple of small floats at the tips. Aluminium "D-box" spar & leading edge - top of spar meets over the bike and the lower part clamps onto the bike using it as a stressed member. Rest of the wing dacron with slide in battens (or aluminium, doesn't really matter).

 

Looks like you have to push the bike backwards onto the craft in order to leave the fan shroud & drive mechanism fixed.

 

HITC, should've sold your landing craft idea to DARPA, they go in for tricky stuff like that. Failing that, the producers of the next James Bond film...

 

[ATTACH=full]23617[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]23618[/ATTACH]

 

Frank, regarding the guy who test flew the WIG and it flipped - I would have thought an accurate scale model would have been a good idea to work out weight & balance first.

Haven't you got anything to do marty_d

 

 

[farri]

Frank, regarding the guy who test flew the WIG and it flipped - I would have thought an accurate scale model would have been a good idea to work out weight & balance first.

Marty, As it`s no secret, I suppose I should have used the guys name. He was Ken (Kenny) corn, one of our club members and he lived at White Rock, just south of Cairns. He actually started building in his back yard, then brought it to our property when it was about half finished. His intention was to ferry cargo to the large number of prawn trawlers that at that time were working the east coast,way up north of Cairns.

 

I`ve had nothing to do with making models so I wouldn`t know anything about it. I`m pretty sure Ken was only going on the ideas he had in his mind. As I remember it, they didn`t allow him to take photos when he was in the plant in Russia.

 

Your sketch on the left looks very similar to Ken`s project. As far as building went, as Ken would say, " There`s no one here who can help, because there`s no one who knows anything about them.".... No one could realy help with the test flight either as no one here had flown one.

 

When I talked to Ken about what he thought might have caused it to flip, he simply didn`t know and couldn`t recall what he`d done.

 

I`ve always thought he didn`t reduce the power fast enough, once it broke the surface of the water and the drag of the water was gone... Didn`t hold the nose down and may even have pulled the stick all the way back.

 

Ballance may well have been completely wrong. We will never know.

 

Frank.

 

 

[Marty_d]

Haven't you got anything to do marty_d

At home looking after 3 kids today, it was raining so couldn't kick 'em outside, so besides keeping them from killing each other... no, not much!!