Ground effect craft are notorious for requiring three times more engine power to take off from the water surface than for cruising over that surface. It is hard to keep the cost down of that bottleneck to profit from a cruising L/D that is similar to jets flying at an altitude of 10 km because these take-off devices are all limited by the physics of water as discussed here. Almost all use planing techniques but remain consequently very limited by the sea state, which limits the range of operation in location and seasons. The state of the art in near commercial application is the hover box based wsh-500 WSH 500 Discovery Channel
Exploring the limits of speed is very interesting indeed to come to grips about the limits of efficiency. Efficiency is also important for the design of a cruising foiler even though the primary goal is steadiness (and thus also keeping from going too fast). But the limited speed range of interest allows focusing on techniques that remain a distance away from the bleeding edge and optimizing for affordable durability.
Posted by: lucjdekeyser@telenet.be
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