Personal Aircraft Carrier

You guys are all cracker jack engineers; a couple of things come to mine here. First any carrier should steam into the wind for launch and recovery opp's even 10 knots on a calm day drops the speed over the deck by that amount. Next; a light GA aircraft is not strong enough to cob a tail hook onto with out getting way to tail heavy. The easiest way to slow down a spam can is a sand box. A 100' landing zone with a 75-100' sand trap will slow down and stop a plane with out any damage. On the aft deck you would have hard surface full beam and at the start of the sand the deck would be split half hard, half soft surface. If the airplane on approach needed to miss they would just steer to the hard deck.

There are a few airports with bends in the runways and they are not that big a deal. A T34/Bonanza would be a cinch in this deck.

Just an idea from an old drag racer and Bonanza driver.
Steve

 

Practical STOL aircraft

Over here in Ormand Beach, Florida a company is now marketing a 2/3 scale of the Fiesler Storch that has a stall of 17 mph. This would be ideal for personal aircraft carrier operations. It has permanenet leading edge slots and flaperons that provide optimum low air speed control. The aircraft was at the latest Sun 'n Fun in Florida. Sand would stop an aircraft, but hinder building takeoff speed which, with a 10 knot wind over the deck, would be 7 mph with 2 people on board the airplane. Actually, the Storch was the predecessor to the Helio Courier and Turbo Porter Aircraft from Sweden.

 

You have the most ridiculous idea on here.

Do you have any idea what a 2500 pounds alluminum can hitting a sandtrap at 30mph will do? How do you expect it to survive this uncontrolled and inconsistent medium and varied angles of attack and POI's.

For future reference I wouldn't go about calling people "crackerjack engineers". Many people on here are engineers for very respectable outfits including myself.

Former F-14D driver, VF-31. Alittlebit faster than your Dr. Killer.

 

Well Mister Tom Cat driver,

I meant the cracker jack in a good way and I am not disparaging engineers. Regarding a sand trap for a tri-gear small GA air plane. I do know what it will do, if the force vector is not yawed it will stop the lil air plane just dandy. I am not talking about sand feet deep, a few inches will do just fine. I don't suppose you ever landed that thing on a soft field and if all you were ever exposed to is Military flight you may not realize that you can land a little airplane on some very different surfaces than a jet with high wheel loading. You would have to do a full stall landing and hold the nose off, we are not talking about carrier opp's in an F-14 slamming on and hitting the two wire.

I think you may have miss read my suggestion; The landing would occur on the hard deck and the airplane would roll out to the sand. I don't understand the POI thing, the airplane is wheels down and it drops an inch into a tray of sand that is 3 inches deep. Unless you are really crossed up when you hit the sand no harm done. You won't even blow up much sand if the nose strut is pumped up.

Before you cast stones; think about what you say, I hold an ATP DA-20 DA-50 HS-125 MEII and LOA for P-51, FB-11 and have a bit of time in T-6. If you have never flown a Bonanza you have missed a real treat.

Steve

 

You really do not need any length of deck as a runway, to launch a jet engined plane. All you need to do is to persuade RAF to sell you one of their HARRIER's. Just make sure that your deck is strong enough so that the downward thrust doesnt punch a hole right through the bottom of the boat!

 

Slang

Don't get your panties in a bunch about "crackerjack."

crackerjack definition
adj.
Slang
Of excellent quality or ability; fine.
crackerjack synonyms
also crackajack adjective
Slang. Having or demonstrating a high degree of knowledge or skill: adept, crack, expert, master, masterful, masterly, professional, proficient, skilled, skillful. See ability
noun
Slang. A person with a high degree of knowledge or skill in a particular field: ace, adept, authority, dab hand, expert, master, past master, professional, proficient, wizard. Informal: whiz. Chiefly British: dab2. See ability
crackerjack etymology

 

Catapults

If you had a STOL plane like the Storch 10 knots over the deck plus 1g from a catapult for 1 second would get the airplane to flying speed.

 

Storch

If you had a forward speed of 10 knots into a 10 knot wind, the Storch is quite capable of lifting straight off of the deck with no take-off roll. Same for the Helio Courier and Pilatus Porters. Same with landing. With the flaperons fully deployed, the aircraft can almost hover to the ground/deck in a 17 knot wind. The 3 aircraft air also proven mouintain rescue birds for landing in super tight places. I flew the Slepcev Storch and the performance is amazing. As far as I know, there are 3 companies building the Storch. Cruise and range isn't bad either. Four hour range at 112 mph. The price for the kit version is about $47,000, but a fully FAA certificated Storch is available for around $87,000.

 

A 20kt wind should be plenty. There are lots of ultralights that can't take off in a 20 kt wind, too strong with a landing speed around 30kt and no way to dump lift. I've seen some with no undercarts, the guy just runs.

Paragliders go up from a beach easily enough with a small powerboat to tow them. I don't see any reason why an ultralight) shouldn't do the same off the back of the boat, though it would need a two engine job and I haven't seen one with no undercart -might need a fairly muscular pilot or some kind of frame with a release. It should be possible to demonstrate this, if it hasn't already been done, with a relatively small boat, rather than a ship. I assume the Storch is single engine which would need a bigger boat with something approach an actual takeoff/landing deck as the prop may cut the towline and would certainly present a danger to helpers.

The towline method would be the simplest and cheapest way to demonstrate the concept and perfectly safe, until it comes time to land. Or is "recover" the correct term to use when returning to a carrier?

The problem is not getting up and dropping the towline, it's getting back to the boat. A real aircraft carrier is a small enough target with a nice stable jet. Things might happen a bit slower but it would probably be a challenge landing with an ultralight jinking around like a mayfly with the DTs on a 3m square target without getting your feet (and underwear) wet. Possibly the air over water is less turbulent than over land.

Anyone out there who knows what this is like? I don't. Might be easier to steer the boat under the plane.

 

Of course if you can accept cruise speeds of 50 - 75K and wish to depart and arrive to an anchored vessel, no wind needed ,a Gyrocopter , with a rotor pre spin will work just fine.

Even easier to stow than any other style aircraft.

BUT , even tho some are sold as Ultralights , INSTRUCTION IS REQUIRED to fly one of these machines.

The rotor must always have a positive angle of attack, go negative ,YOU DIE!

FF

 

Personal carrier capable aircraft

Hi Fred. You are right about the gyro copter. With plenty of experience you can set it down on the numbers and stop. Before anyone tries this stuff, adequate flight education is a must without question, even with ultralights. Ultralight flight time can be used to get a new generation of license call "Sport Pilot". The aircraft flown with a sport Pilot's license has to be under 1,300 pounds. A Cessna 150 weighs 1,650+ pounds. Of course, a written test and flight test are required for FAA licensing, but it's an inexpensive way to get a license and be able to carry a passenger. The basic Storch weighs in at just 1,300 pounds, but there's also an ultralight Storch with the same flight capabilities but complies with ultralight weight limits.
It would appear that a used 198' deck barge with some power and steering capability would suffice combined with some of the suggested inexpensive super STOL/VSTOL aircraft. The reason VSTOL is mentioned is that a few gyrocopter designs have a pre-spin-up capability for the rotor which permits the gyrocopter to virtually vertically leap off of the deck like a helicopter rather than having a long ground roll to spin the rotor. The Experimental Aircraft Association would have information on building the pre-spin mechanical device.

 

Hi,
I'll start with admitting that I know very little about flying and just slighty more about boats. I've understood that some small airplanes have stall speeds down 20 k. I know for certain that many boats can obtain speeds much higher than that. A powerboat owned by someone who would consider having an airplane aboard would be at least 20 m long, plane comfortaly at >30 k and have a top speed >40 k. So why is a runway needed? When starting, just run the boat at 30 k and let go of the airplane. When landing, go at 30 k, match speed with the airplane and then grab it from the boat. No runway needed.

Where's the catch?

Erik

 

The Catch

The catch is LANDING, unless you're planning on the airplane making a one-way trip.

The only pilots who can execute the landing maneuver you describe get paid to do them as stunts at airshows, and even that's where nobody has to worry about a rolling or pitching landing surface.

 

So it isn't easy to match speed and land. On the other hand it isn't impossible either.
In my profession I have stabilised quite heavy equipment to high accuracy on small boats. (4 tons on a 20 tons boat.) In my experience rolling and pitching are not so bad at planing speeds, at least in moderate weather. It's much worse at displacement speeds.
I believe it would be possible to make a stabilised "docking equipment" on a boat that, with the use of proper instrumentation and some automatics, would take the stunt out of such a landing. In rough weather this airport would close and the airplane would have to land on firm ground.

Compare it with refuelling in the air; if there is a need, ways will be found to overcome the problems. I have not seen such a landing system and the most likely explanation is that there has been no military need for it. Who else would put up the money to develop it? It's questionable if there is a cilivilian need either. Helicopters have filled this niche.
One possible use could be for operating automated or remote controlled reconnaissance drones from patrol boats.

It's good that the argument "why bother?" isn't applicable to this thread.

Erik

 

The trouble with helicopters, of course, is that even for small ones the operating costs are disgusting when compared to a fixed-wing aircraft of comparable payload capacity.
The Canadian navy developed a system many years ago for landing the gigantic Sea King helicopter on ships as small as a frigate, often with a landing pad no larger than the rotor, while the ship is heaving and pitching and generally getting tossed around by waves, and the helicopter being blown around by wind. Essentially, the helicopter drops a heavy-duty tow cable from a special winch on its belly, with a fitting on the end that is guided to a matching fitting on deck. Once the cable docks up (with the chopper hovering a safe distance above the deck) it is winched down with the chopper still hovering until the wheels touch down.
A variant of this idea might be suitable for this ultra-STOL plane we've been talking about here. The plane would deploy a ridiculous amount of flaps and slats, match course and speed above the yacht, drop a tow line, and be winched down while still fully supported by aerodynamic lift.