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Comment by Reason077 | Hacker News Reader

What are the operating limits in terms of weather? At only 10m above the surface, I assume bad things could happen in stormy conditions! I'm guessing these will be best suited to sheltered areas and fair-weather tourist operations?

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It has three modes of operation: hull, hydrofoil and flight in ground effect. So it can operate as a slow boat, a fast boat or a ground effect plane. I imagine in bad weather it would switch to a slower mode.

Bad weather usually means big waves as well, so that complicates "just go slower" particularly when it comes to the foil mode. This is what's killed the practicality of previous ground effect aircraft but perhaps they've found the right niches for this one.

Previous ground effect craft absolutely were killed by their poor wave tolerance. That's where our hydrofoils come in. 5ft of wave tolerance through the harbors and in takeoff and landing. Means we can operate with very high confidence and high utilization in most markets.

You mentioned not needing reserve energy because you're able to land anywhere along the flight path. Does that mean you can safely land and float in waves higher than 5ft, even if it isn't necessarily pleasant for passengers or good for the vehicle?

With regard to waves you'll have a much harder time in slow modes as compared to WIG. Soviet (large) ekranoplanes could take off with 1.5 and continue flight in 5 meter waves. Gale force winds is another story.

That was certainly the case for the older ground effect craft like the ekranoplan[0] (which is a very interesting read), but perhaps there are important differences/improvements with this far, far more modern model?

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lun-class_ekranoplan

High winds and weather systems occasionally effect air travel, but once flying above the water at 10m, you can fly over normal ocean swell conditions. The introduction of the foils is a key for making the seaglider comfortable from the inner harbors to the outer harbor in realistic operation conditions (wind/wave combinations).

As a sailor I hope these dont take off. It'll put a lot of the water off limits to boaters. Which would really suck.

The COLREGs are clear, WIG (wing-in-ground-effect) vehicles needs to keep clear of everyone when not in displacement mode.

Rule 18 (f)

(i): A WIG craft shall, when taking off, landing and in flight near the surface, keep well clear of all other vessels and avoid impeding their navigation;

(ii): A WIG craft operating on the water surface shall comply with the Rules of this Part as a power-driven vessel.

It's true, but I'm sure changes could be made ...

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