The Airfish 8

[TheCoolPilot]

Now I came across this article while surfing the web and thought you guys might find it interesting. (The article is linked down below). So, a company in Singapore (my home yaaay) called WidgetWorks has designed a boat-plane like a vehicle. This plane-boat will cruise up to 6 metres above water at a speed of up to 180 kilometres an hour. Now at this point many of you will be thinking, this guy is crazy this is a boat, not a plane. Though it does have many features of a boat, it is related to aircraft. It lands and takes off like a normal aircraft and has a cockpit similar to airplanes.

Airfish 8: This Unique Marine Craft Will Change The Way People Travel

This is supposedly going to “revolutionize” how we travel so let me know what you think about this!!

[Marshall_J]

You’ve forgotten to mentiond that it flies just above the ground due to ‘ground effect’. Ground Effect is when the aircraft is in close proximity to the ground and the air passes below the wing and gets trapped between the ground and wing creating a cushion of air in which the aircraft is able to ‘float’ on. It requires some speed to get going though.

It looks like a very fun amphibian to fly here are some cool videos on it if anyone wants to investigate some further;

[anon31652286]

How funny, I was discussing this around 20 minutes ago. Very interesting concept.

[Artem_F]

Nice finding.
However, how would you deal with waves? They will ruin your ‘aircraft’

[TheCoolPilot]

Very interesting question as I’m not really sure. Would love to find out though!!

[anon31652286]

It looks like that was already brought up - if you see the ‘hands free landing’ you will see the aircraft falling quite hard into the sea. I’d imagine it would cope with the force of the water the same in waves, otherwise it just wouldn’t be operating in those conditions.

[Aussie_Wombat]

I think this is pretty cool, would be interesting to pilot

[MisterButler]

I thought they were a Malaysian company?

[TheCoolPilot]

According to the website it says it Singaporean but I ain’t sure!

[Matt737]

I think they’d have a high pitch when flaring, so that the fuselage near the tail touches first. Once it touches, you’ll hold that pitch and slowly reduce the throttle, to where it’ll sit down gently in the water. Think of it like mogul skiing. Except, the waves come up on the plane, while it holds its altitude, and absorbs the wave. Of course, this could be completely wrong, but it’s just what I think.