My Hydrofoil (no space)

[Stewcumber]

I spent a few hours not going to space and made a hydrofoil that can do 90m/s and has enough fuel to go to The Island and back (wow.)

It does have centre of thrust vs weight balance issues so always leans to the front when going at more than a third throttle, but that can be fixed by just pitching up continually

Also has a Death Seat.

It has undercarriage for land traversing and some versions have rover wheels so it has a usable turning circle and more controlable on land throttle.

Undercarriage up- Tight turning with rover wheels:

Undercarriage down- raises rover wheels off the ground = high speed!

I'm surprised at "well" the game handles boats considering it is a game about going to space.

Edited December 18, 2013 by Stewcumber

[johnnyhandsome]

Nice! .Craft file?

[Libra00]

I've made a bunch of hydrofoils in previous versions and it's not hard to get them up to ~180m/s speed. The key is to use vertical foils to reduce drag (I use straight wing pieces) and add horizontal winglets (not the control surface kind) at the bottom to provide additional bouyancy. Think: Inverted T. The hard part is keeping the nose out of the water at low speeds, and keeping the whole thing in the water at high speeds. As speed increases and fuel burns they develop an increasing tendency to get serious air and there's no surviving that.

[Stewcumber]

I tried to make a single support upsidedown T hydrofoil but it always falls over, so I've stuck to catamaran opposing L shaped versions. Yeah I've noticed that if they bouce at all you tend to take off leading to a less alive and more wet Jeb!

I did also make a large "ferry" which would max at 45m/s but have a longer range. The rover wheels limit the speed a lot but now that the undercarriage can steer I might ditch those

I'm at work now so the craft file will have to wait till tonight!

Libra00, fancy sharing yours?

[junie]

Nice! .Craft file?

I second that!