Hull for Amphibius Aircraft - New Comer

Perhaps think about an inflatable hull which can be retracted in flight and will allow you to land on any flat surface via an air cushion landing system.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1373723


Video of the "Super Blimp"
http://www.maniacworld.com/super-blimp.html

 

.... and they have completed rough water landing and takeoff ..

http://www.iconaircraft.com/news.html#icon-advances-flight-safety-on-the-a5

a looooong way from static towing on a calm lake like the FlyNnano crowd.

Doug, you of all people should know how long and difficult the 'concept to proven' cycle of an aircraft is - so FlyNano has a lot of gall advertising the flight specs and performance of a craft that doesnt look like it even has had an engine mounted.

My old brain remembers many products built and designed by the marketing department, that ended up with fatal flaws. Everything from the Morris Mini to the 'unsafe at any speed' Corvair, right up to the present day Toyota and Mitsubishi recall scandals. Heck, just watch 'Aircrash Investigations' one night this week.

Its a shame that there is no law about advertising 'best guesses' as facts.
This is stuff from a computer simulation -

Service ceiling 3 km
Range 40 km

but its made to sound like fact. No - "we are designing for", or "our engineers would like to achieve" in their advertising.

It may be an old mans gripe, but I have a real aversion to advertising hype and unproven product claims.

 

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I've read Flying magazine every month since 1965 up to last year and I love reading about proposed new aircraft. It's certainly true that some turn out to be vapor ware-new aircraft probably more than new boats. But in the initial stages of a new aircraft design the designer has a good idea what the targets should be and what could be achieved if those targets are reached. Sometimes, you're right, a marketing department can go too far but it's a tough situation: on one hand it's essential that the potential buying public knows what the design team is trying to achieve because that's what separates "this product" from any other. It can lead to pre-sold aircraft. On the other hand missed deadlines and/or missed targets can quickly lead to lost sales, lost financing and the companies demise. Look at the Icon-over 500 sold! And I've seen that time and again in successful product intros but then you have cases like the Starship-how could it fail? But fail it did.
So you have good reason to be skeptical, but just from my perspective-I think calling Fly Nano "vaporware" ,at this point, is probably premature.
I hope they are succesful!