It’s a ground effect hydrofoil sea plane inter island electric ferry concept, so it’s near its limit in the video.
Ground effect refers to a flight characteristic noticed at low altitudes where the air below the wing compresses between the wing and ground, creating enormous lift with smaller wings or winglets. This makes them much more efficient, especially at lower speeds or with heavy loads.
The largest I know of is the Ecronoplan- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lun-class_ekranoplan)

Here’s a bit more info
https://www.hawaiiseaglider.org/

Many “birds” make use of this flight characteristic to save battery power during long term surveillance flights, especially just offshore.

They missed my favourite, the Bartini Bariev VVA-14M1P, which was a hybrid Ekranoplan/traditional aircraft which could fly at higher altitudes, but was designed to maximize the ground effect so it could cruise very long distances at sea level.

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Haven't Googled anything, but I think it's like ground effect in airplanes and helicopters. The dolphin is pushing against a horizontal "column" of water the ship is pushing in front of it. Allows it to move along with little effort.

I would think that, to the dolphin, it feels like how a dog does with it's head out a car window. All the benefits of moving fast, with almost none of the effort.

To be fair, what I thought is new is the cheaper motor running on regular unleaded gas more efficiently. Airplane fuel is insanely expensive compared to gas, and harder to get in remote places.
Ground effects plane/boats have been around for quite some time, but not in a commercially useful configuration. This seems like a big step up from small ferries or tour boats (faster and smoother rides) and far cheaper than small planes to buy and operate.

Yeah, the biggest ecranoplan was enormous, with immense lifting capacity but little evasive capacity, so they were awful in practice as military vehicles except as transports well behind the front. I can't find any instances of them being used in conflicts.

Nah, it was always the same. The lack of overtaking is commonly blamed on high downforce, carbon brakes, and super short braking distances, but it actually wasn't any better before they put wings on cars. Same thing: the rich, fast teams qualify and start at the front and stay at the front and get richer and faster...with the occasional fall from grace (Mclaren) or rise from obscurity (Brawn->Mercedes). As cool as they are technologically, development series like F1 tends to result in boring races.

ed: Oh, and using ground effect has been banned since 81(?). Interestingly, Indycars use the ground effect (though without the skirts so it's not as effective as the F1 ground effect cars), and by virtue of being a (mostly) spec series, has much better races.

It's a simple thing to cover the blade with a net so you can't fall into it, or so it can't fall onto others.
Stuff on the ground being blown around is only a minor issue when it's near the ground at takeoff and landing. This isn't a ground effects plane, it flies. That means any place a helicopter can take off and/or land would be more than safe, as would any field, clean street, parking garage, any place that's clean or free of people and glass should be fine. It's only about 400lbs of thrust spread over (estimating) about 12 sq. ft., so less than 40lbs of thrust per sq. ft. , or less than 1/3 lb. of thrust per sq. inch MAX. I doubt that can create a 'bullet' out of anything. It would take just a tiny bit of common sense to make this issue a non-issue, if there's an issue at all.

Is that a ground effect seaplane? If so, neat, if they ever actually make them.

I've been thinking about that... I wonder if you could still use the ground effect, but dangle down some little wheels?

Still, it's not quite in the spirit of the thing.

Well apparently , the organisers of the Australian GP are threatening to sue because it wasn't loud enough. I remember as a kid hearing a formula 1 car in person when one did a demo lap in Dublin. The noise just blew me away, I had literally never heard anything that loud.

Personally, I think this kinda misses the point of F1. GT racing has always been more exciting because it's closer, but that's not why people watch F1. It should be about the best drivers racing the fastest cars. Yeah, the engineering is part of it. Bring back big engines, bring back ground effect, let's really see what the engineers can do.

F1 has always been as much about the technical aspect as the drivers.

And let's face it...Guitars, jet fighters, explosions.... loud things are just fucking awesome. .

Thanks That's really quick, the lap was supposed to be within 30s of the all time record set by a fire-breathing ground effect car, the legendary Porsche 956... interestingly they both have a link to the Can-Am series.

I did a little amateur investigation, a bit of reading and some numbers but you can skip to the bottom for a summary.

The plane is a Stinson 108-3, 16500 foot service ceiling, 2400 pound gross weight limit (1300 empty weight), 50 gallon fuel capacity. Thats about 1100 of useful weight (2400-1300), with full fuel that lowers it to 800 (6lbs per gallon*50 gallons=300lbs), I saw 3 men in there the 4th passenger I'm gonna assume male, so lets say 180lbs for each (200 for the pilot) that comes to 740lbs for passenger weight. That leaves 60lbs for cargo. Although I couldn't see the cargo, they were still close to the weight limit but still could have been within normal limits.

The airport Bruce Meadows (U63) has a field elevation of 6370 feet. I couldnt find the airport temperature for that day but I did find nearby Stanley Airport 23 Miles southeast of Bruce Meadows. Their METAR history shows a high of 27 Celsius/81 Fahrenheit for June 30, 2012. Definitely a hot day but was it too hot? The closest I could find on performance data shows a 675 Feet per Minute climb at 75 Fahrenheit at sea level. Thats pretty close to what many small planes of that nature can do, so I took those numbers and transposed them over what a Cessna 172N could do. The 172N has a slighty higher climb performance about 750 for sea level and 75 Fahrenheit, a difference of 75 feet ill subtract out. At 6000 feet at 27C/81F the 172N climbs at 420FPM. Taking out the 75 feet brings it to 345 FPM, now I know this isn't perfect but I'm going with what I have. The plane began its climb out at 1:13 and crashed at 2:55, that leaves 1 minute and 42 seconds in between or 1.7 minutes. 1.7*345 means about 590 feet possible gain. But the plane isn't climbing at its best the entire video, at 2:35 it is apparent something is giving it trouble, that brings it down to about 1.58 minutes climb time which is 545 feet. Theres still another factor to consider and thats how consistent the altitude at the ground was.

The runway at Bruce meadows faces at 05/23 (Northeast/Southwest) but most likely he took runway 23 (Southwest) as immediately to the north east theres a wildlife preserve (Gotta fly at least 2000 feet over it) and he flew straight for quite some time. Although the ground increases in the direction he flew, by how much is difficult using the sectional charts. That means that although he may have been able to climb to about 545 feet higher than his original ground altitude, the ground rose with him and his absolute altitude over the ground would be less than that maximum possible 545. The passenger in the rear reported the plane could only climb to about 60-70 feet above the trees. The trees looked to be around 75-100 but thats still difficult to tell. That would mean according to the passenger they might have only been about 170 feet off the ground. It could still be wildly off as we cant exactly see the altimeter.

Finally theres that disturbance at 2:35 described as a downdraft. It could have been windshear, or a wind effect from the mountains. I don't have too much hands on knowledge of mountain flying so I cant say. If it was windshear he might have suddenly lost a headwind and got a tailwind, screwing up his performance. It could have been a downdraft effect. The actual effect on the aircraft may not have been much (lets say 50 feet) but near obstacles it was definitely enough to have a negative impact.



Summary:

Yes he was flying pretty heavy but he may not have been over the weight limit

The temperature in the area was definitely hotter than standard and the altitude was high, but he still had climbing capabilities within service limits. However he didn't give himself much of a safety threshold.

He might have been able to climb about 545 feet higher than the runway elevation, but the terrain altitude rose in the direction he flew, so his actual altitude over the ground was probably smaller than that.

The disturbance at 2:35 might have been some form of windshear which has the capacity to reduce airplane performance, and with his margins of safety so low already, that could have been the final factor.

Basically he may very well have been flying within the service limits of the aircraft, but the margins of safety he left himself were very low and the decision to fly over obstacles like those trees in that mountain enviroment could be the reason this would be declared pilot error.

Other notes:

The takeoff looks pretty rough but he trying to get off the ground as quickly as he can and ride ground effect until he gets up to speed.

I cant find anything resembling a proper PoH for this aircraft but I did find some data that looks pretty close to it. However this aircraft was a model from the late 40s, so the standards of performance may not be the same as now, and the transcribing I did to the 172N could be thrown off more.

On that note, I do realize that a 172 would have different aerobatic effects with altutude and temperature than a Stinson 108, but its the closest data I could use.

I also couldnt not find balance information to get a rough idea of how the plane was balanced. The type of balance on a plane does have effects on performance.

http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/N773C.html (The aircraft)

http://www.aopa.org/airports/U63 (The airport)

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20120701X65804&key=1 (The NTSB link posted earlier)

http://personalpages.tdstelme.net/~westin/avtext/stn-108.txt (Closest thing I could find to performance data, the actual numbers are at the bottom)

http://vortex.plymouth.edu/cgi-bin/gen_statlog-u.cgi?ident=KSNT&pl=none2&yy=12&mm=06&dd=30 (Weather data at nearby Stanley)

http://skyvector.com (sectional chart data, type U63 into the search at the upper left, then make sure that "Salt Lake City" is selected in the upper right for the sectional chart)

idk, looks pretty legit too me. There must be a quite a lot of ground effect in play. I very much doubt you could get any kind of altitude with this.

Yeah but we needed this chaos. The previous season were so dull that i didn't even watch all the races, something i haven't done since 1991. There has always been these watershed moments in F1; teams coming up with groundbreaking inventions and FIA regulating them.. Just think ground effect, active suspensions, turbos all of them effectively changing the sport at the time. This is not the first time FIA introduces new stuff but this time they made the cars faster instead slower, as the main trend has been.

But the main thing is to listen to drivers and they all like this season a lot! Chaos brings life to stagnation..

>> ^oritteropo:

I thought that the ground effect would keep it higher than that?


Ground effect only increases lift by < 10%. The control authority required to counteract ground effect is at most a few percent of what is available to the pilot.