Stuff That Never Made It - but why?

[pyro-manic]

The tricky thing would be designing an amphibious hull that has low enough drag that it can perform as well as conventional airliners (fuel consumption etc).

[Weaver]

The tricky thing would be designing an amphibious hull that has low enough drag that it can perform as well as conventional airliners (fuel consumption etc).

It doesn't have to IF you can sell the flying public on the concept of total journey time:

Conventional airliner: commute through hideous traffic to small number of UK airports, allow loads of time for check-in, airport delays, ATC delays etc... fly to a major airport on mainland Greece, get a taxi to the harbour, get a ferry to your Aegean island, fall asleep for 14 hours because you're knackered......

Flying boat: commute to nearest bit of seaside (lots more coast than airport), fly straight to Aegean island, walk straight into the bar....

Of course that's not an entirely accurate or fair comparison, but that's how you market it.

[Stargazer]

Flying boats have been the greatest victim of post-war pragmatism and jet age realism. At their highlight they represented a dream, the best of both worlds: speedy as an aircraft, comfortable and luxurious as a sea liner... That was a time when flying was still considered a privilege, but also a time when the satisfaction of the customer was paramount. True, flying has become a more trivial and common thing to do, more people can and will take a plane than in the thirties, but a great toll has been taken on the ability to dream of your trip for years onwards. Now it's pretty much fly and forget, the sooner you get from point A to point B, the better. There is no more enjoyment in the journey, and that's what the 1930s liners (particularly the flying boats) were all about...

[ChernayaAkula]

Well an ekranoplan fying from the UK to the Med is either going to have to take an awfully long diversion to go through the Straits of Gibraltar, or it's going to have to spend a large chunk of it's journey in inefficient high-altitude flight over land. This is one of the fundamental limitations of ekranoplans.

Yeah, that's indeed a problem. So maybe those routes should be left to conventional planes. But there should still be enough routes across water that would benefit from an Ekranoplan vs. current airliner or ferry service. Take the large cities on the Chinese coast, for example. Or across the North Sea, Baltic or Mediterranean. Or along the US or Australian coasts. I've read that 4 billion people live within 400km of the sea coasts. Of those, 3.2 billion live within 200km of the coasts. 

[McColm]

There were plans to use the EKranoplane as a crossing option from the UK to France.
Remember if the EKranoplanes are class as boats and therefore are under maritime control.
If you fly a flying boat or amphibious aircraft you are governed by the FAA whilst in the air and Maritime organisations on the water.

[Weaver]

There were plans to use the EKranoplane as a crossing option from the UK to France.
Remember if the EKranoplanes are class as boats and therefore are under maritime control.
If you fly a flying boat or amphibious aircraft you are governed by the FAA whilst in the air and Maritime organisations on the water.

IIRC, they International regulations for Ekranoplans define several different types with different rules applying. The principle distinction is whether the craft can climb out of ground effect and fly normally or not. If it can't then it's a boat and has to go around other boats under maritime control. If it can, then it's a plane and can go over boats. Not sure who controls it in what phase of it's flight then.

An ekranoplan that could land on water and then run up a beach could also be useful in serving small, distant islands like the Orkneys and Shetlands, although how big a craft the traffic volumes wolu justify is another matter: ekranoplans tend to show their best economics at large sizes.

I wouldn't have thought that crossing the English Channel was a long enough journey for the increased speed of an ekranoplan to show enough advantage to compensate for the increased cost, to be honest. Now the ferry routes to the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Spain/Portugal, on the other hand......


<edited to put the right sentences in the right paragraphs....... >

[PR19_Kit]

The Saunders-Roe Princess was a futuristic vision of air travel. Conceived as a long-range passenger flying-boat, just as the land planes could offer lower operational costs such as the Stratocruiser.
Both had a double deck, but unlike the stratocruiser the Princess lacked the engines and amphibious landing gear. It took ten Bristol Proteus 600 turboprops (eight in coupled units and two single units) to power the plane.
Turbojets could have saved the Princess and led to the worlds first civilian jet liner. The Princess Landplane would have been an ideal cargo plane. Even a replacement for the Sunderlands in the maritime patrol role, this being taken over by the Shackleton.

As a card-carrying fan of the SR45 Princess (I touched one once, you know ) I feel a little defence is required here.

The Stratocruiser was a toy compared to the Princess, at about half the weight and 2/3 the size. While the passenger loadings were about the same, the Princess out-ranged the Strat 5700 nms to 4100, and it was planned to be much more spacious inside, in the manner of flying boat designs of the time. The telling difference was the wing area, the Princess had around 5000 sq. ft and the Strat around 1700 sq. ft.

Saying that it took ten Proteii to power it as against four Wasp Majors, that's 25000 bhp against 14000 bhp, makes me surprised the Princess didn't need MORE engines to move such bulk actually. Plus there were some spare engines left over in case one went pop, and neither the Proteus nor the Wasp Major were the most reliable engines in their particular fields anyway.

The two aircraft didn't compete, they were designed for two different markets.

[Mossie]

IIRC, they International regulations for Ekranoplans define several different types with different rules applying. The principle distinction is whether the craft can climb out of ground effect and fly normally or not. If it can't then it's a boat and has to go around other boats under maritime control. If it can, then it's a plane and can go over boats. Not sure who controls it in what phase of it's flight then. Now the ferry routes to the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Spain/Portugal, on the other hand......

There are three classes of Ekranoplan/WIG/Wingship:
Type A: Doesn't operate out of Ground Effect, governed by shipping regulations.
Type B: Can operate out of ground effect for short hops, governed by shipping regulations.
Type C: Aircraft with the ability to operate in ground effect, governed by aviation regulations.

I wouldn't have thought that crossing the English Channel was a long enough journey for the increased speed of an ekranoplan to show enough advantage to compensate for the increased cost, to be honest.

Some of the longer cross channel routes that currently use fast ferries might well benefit.  I guess it all depends on the maximum speed that shipping regs will let you obtain, the max speed of an Orlyonok eclipses that of a fast ferry.  Depends as well on how fast a ferry size ekranoplan would be.  There seem to be a few companies researching WIG ferries.

[PR19_Kit]

I wouldn't have thought that crossing the English Channel was a long enough journey for the increased speed of an ekranoplan to show enough advantage to compensate for the increased cost, to be honest.

That's effectively what killed off the use of the SRN4 hovercraft across the Channel. They cost a lot to run, what with 4 Proteii (see Princess flying boat above...... ) and 2 APUs all whistling away, and it made little difference to the operating costs whether the craft was empty or full. There was also an issue of diminishing support from the manufacturer, who had been merged, taken-over, split and re-merged more times than I've had breakfast!

In the 70s I spent a short while working on the SeaSpeed SRN4 Mk 1s, the smallest of the three versions in service, and I was told then that they could not operate at their maximum possible speed on the Dover-Calais route, but I'm not sure if that was regulation led or some other performance issue. Even with that limitation they were much faster than the surface ferries then in service, nowadays the wave-piercers and other high speed craft would be very competitive, certainly on running costs.

[Stargazer]

Interesting. But that's because they chose to compete with the boats on the shortest routes (Boulogne/Calais-Folkestone/Dover) instead of going for the long 4-hour crossing routes (such as Dieppe-Newhaven). Never understood why they did not favor the Normandy crossings... Not only that could have made the hovercraft worth the while, but it also would have made the ride a lot more confortable (and thus saved tons of vomit dispersed across the cabins of the ferries on rough sea nights...  )

[PR19_Kit]

At the time hovercraft were invented the Dover-Calais route was by far the busiest one there was, and BR, who owned SeaSpeed, were major competitors on that route. It was the natural place for them to enter the fray I think.

Why would the routes to Normandy have provided a better ride than the short sea routing? It's the same sea on both routes surely?

I've never found a hovercraft's ride to be any worse than any other ferry myself, it's just different. The ride in a large hovercraft, once it gets over the hump, tends to have a higher frequency content than a conventional displacement ship, without as much high amplititude heave and roll content that you get in a ship. But that 'buzz' can be disquieting to some passengers, it's a personal thing, like car sickness, or dare I suggest tilt sickness on tilting trains. (Don't get me going on the latter, I could [and have done so....] write volumes on the subject! )

[Hobbes]

The high-speed ferries (all of them) have been killed by the Channel Tunnel. It's hard to beat the 20min (?) crossing time and high frequency of the train link, even with an ekranoplan. The ekranoplan will be faster, but probably needs more time to dock.
It also has very limited capacity compared to a ferry or train.

[PR19_Kit]

I beg to differ.

There is still a market for sea crossings, that's why they've just built an extension at Dover and Calais docks. While the Chunnel may be faster in theory, in practice it takes only slightly less time, motorway to motorway, than a fast ferry. When you've been incarcerated on one of the Shuttles for over an hour, with no refreshments, no toilets, and damn all information about why the train is delayed, it rather concentrates the mind on the comfort of a ferry!

I might add I speak from personal experience there, and it took me phoning to the Chunnel HQ on my mobile phone, to get an answer when the train staff flatly refused to do so!

Unless you book a LONG time in advance the Chunnel is damned expensive too, especially of you are on the European side and are paying in Euros.

[McColm]

I beg to differ.

There is still a market for sea crossings, that's why they've just built an extension at Dover and Calais docks. While the Chunnel may be faster in theory, in practice it takes only slightly less time, motorway to motorway, than a fast ferry. When you've been incarcerated on one of the Shuttles for over an hour, with no refreshments, no toilets, and damn all information about why the train is delayed, it rather concentrates the mind on the comfort of a ferry!

I might add I speak from personal experience there, and it took me phoning to the Chunnel HQ on my mobile phone, to get an answer when the train staff flatly refused to do so!

Unless you book a LONG time in advance the Chunnel is damned expensive too, especially of you are on the European side and are paying in Euros.

There are toilets on the shuttle, but they are towards the front end. The carriages sway from side to side and if you are on a coach. The coach will bob up and down, similar to to being on board a submarine for the first time. It's the toll you have to pay and why do the French and the Americans drive on the wrong side of the road? I'm always looking in the wrong direction whilst crossing the road.

[Stargazer]

Having crossed the Channel by plane, ferry-boat, hovercraft, Eurostar and Shuttle, I think I can reasonably say that nothing beats the Eurostar. At least for a pedestrian. It takes you from the heart of one capital to the heart of the other in less than 3 hours... and with no fatigue whatsoever, no luggage to claim, no risks of suitcases getting lost... You can't beat that! True, the plane is faster... but then you lose so much time simply commuting to and from airports that it ruins your schedule and you spend about three hours as well, having sweated a bit more on the way (or panicked in the back seat of a taxi wondering if you'd make it to the airport in time...)

Now if you have to compare the boats and hovercraft, it is with the Shuttle trains, which do only the crossing. The ferry-boat is great because you can walk around, shop around, walk on the decks in the open air, play video games or watch television, sleep... but it takes an hour and a half, and getting the cars in takes ages... The hovercraft is great... original, fast (35 minutes) but kind of noisy... It provides a valuable alternative for those who are sick on a boat and gets loaded much faster I think. Unfortunately it is much more costly to operate... The Shuttle doesn't seem like such an improvement on the hovercraft because it takes about as much time. All in all, the train is the most boring of the three, but there is nothing the hovercraft did that the train can't, save the sight of course. Hard to beat progress, though my personal fave will always be the boat...