Testing Wheels on a Ground Effect Vehicle

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[RileyMonthule]

The high speed stabilized camera with its own operator is so overkill and so awesome I love it😂😂

[MrRlnansel]

You might want to look up the late Francis Reynolds' "Hydrocopter" concept. It's been many, many years ago, but he explored a fascinating hydrofoil concept that looks, from today's perspective, sort of like an inverted quadcopter with independently tiltable rotors that touch the water on each rotor circle's tangent. By controlling each rotor axis tilt in 2 dimensions he was able to place the water contact patch for each so that the thrust generated could point in any direction in the horizontal plane.

My Reynolds died in 2019, but he was a retired Boeing engineer who lived on Lake Sammamish (as I recall) where he proved out various model craft experiments. One of his early prototypes for what would become the hydrocopter used very similar paddle wheels to what you are using. His direct inspiration came from the way water fowl use their webbed feet as dynamic hydrofoils to get off the water so their wings can take over. If I remember right (it was the mid '80s when he was presenting this to a group) he said the paddle wheel version was difficult to control around yaw; that is why he eventually went with the tilted thruster design.

Mr Reynolds held a number of patents. His full name was Francis Drake Reynolds, and he was an avid RC air and water craft modeller.

[robotics_and_stuff]

Very nice video! That dolly zoom at 12:29 is fantastic!

[gabrielbritto]

That high speed shot where it was trowing up water and making a rainbow was so pretty!! 8:44

[psychogat]

I'm watching this on my lunch break in the boiler room of one of the paddlewheel boats from the beginning of the video haha.

[ShamblerDK]

The cinematography on this channel is unparallelled.

[sealerer]

that footage of the plane gliding is just so crisp

[gpaull]

I’m so impressed with your frequent outside of the box ideas! 😎

[robotheseus]

This is fantastic work. I feel like the high-speed paddle wheel is a real breakthrough -- they allow a much higher tolerance for error in the wing design and PID controls. I'd love to see you experiment with paddle geometries and see if produce more thrust or reduce spray.
Also, the camera work was absolutely pristine. I'm so glad you're having fun with this.

[RobDavisAkaMonk]

Daniel was the guy getting silky smooth drone footage back in the day when the rest of us were getting footage the looked like it came out of a blender. So naturally he's upped his footage game again!

[pyrobabyyoda]

As a boat and somewhat camera nerd the camera setup is SO cool to me and the footage is downright beautiful!

[DangerousDac]

Holy shit thats the most impressive camera I've seen in a long ass time.

[miffiko]

My dad builded real ground effect vehicles in the 90s as an engineer. They thought Im crazy in elementary school then I told them that my fathers job is to build "flying ships". Since a child I had this idea to build a rc ground effect vehicle one day and just discovered your channel. Very inspiring! Thanks alot!

[complimentaryrandomnessinc]

This is so freaking cool! Nowadays its rare to find truly new permutations of ideas, and this is a good one!

[gaelm]

You could try triangular shaped paddles to get a smoother transition when the wheels plunge into water. It would reduce the bouncing over water.
I love your experiments, science can be really fun!

[TheScarletTomato]

Those shots at the end looked amazing!

[lifesahobby]

When they made the sidewinder missile, on each directional fin control surface they had tiny spinning wheels at 2000 rpm to keep the track from squirming

[CallMeTaste]

the shots have been getting better and better!

[danmartinrc]

I love that you’re not afraid to answer questions nobody has, just in the name of science. 👍

[sdg]

to prevent the water from kicking up, you could have the paddles be curved, which would help eject the water before it gets picked up. it would also push the water down, creating more lift to help it get off the water.