Personal Aircraft Carrier

The 195' idea has no expandability, Once we do it and find out it works we have to drop it and buy something new.

I wouldn't buy anything smaller than 250', 300' would be optimal. Then if you prove that it works you can sell it as is with everything, island, hangar, elevators. if not then you dismantle it and sell it.

I could see the USCG interested and smaller countries interested in a cheap blue water aviation capability. Their is no way they would be able to take on larger navies but it could provide recon, and light forward air support to ground troops.

put a pair of .50 cal machine guns under the wings and a gunsight in the cockpit and you have an attack aircraft, put a pair of 250pound bombs under the wings and you have a light bomber. Granted it is very crude to us but it would appeal to many 'limited' governments looking for some sort of offensive abilitys at a steal of a price. If you had 2 aircraft configured with .50cals and rockets, one with some small free fall bombs, then a pair of helicopters to drop off SF troops ontop of the marines landing on the beach, which you could also keep onboard with the room below the hangar deck and you have quite an assault force.

The ship could also be reconfigured for SAR operations. Strap extra fuel tanks under the wings and send them out with a pair of helicopters on standby to go pick them up when the planes sight them.

Border patrol could be accomplished with a simularly to the search and rescue idea, just replacing the helicopters with gunboats and maybe stepping down the mood from a rushed high speed response to a slower loitering action. Just one or maybe two airplanes up at once as the ship can remain on site allmost indefinitely due to the fact that the aircraft and support boats could cycle the crew (probably an aircraft job), bring fuel and supplys to the ship (probably a support boat job). Allowing the ship to remain a comfortable 500miles off shore and still be within 4-5hours of land. Creating a comfortable buffer between invading forces or zone SAR/boarder patrol.

I would deffinatly say the market for a ship like this exists in both the developed & developing world making it a viable investment with the possibilites for great return.

 

there was a turbine powered helio for $65K 10 yrs back, 15' rotors, 500hp?
there was also 12'er counter rotater w/4 motors. Easiest is a pontoon ultralight.

 

Mind me asking what your talking about?

 

Why ********** when you can have reality?

http://www.polarismotor.it/

And it makes a dandy dinghy too!

 

That won't have the range or endurance of a normal STOL airplane let alone speed.

 

Not worried about range and speed

Being that this is purely experimental and conceptual, range and speed are secondary considerations at this point. I intend to fly the Slepcev Storch here in Florida in a couple of weeks and see what performance it has.

 

Preceptor advertises the King Stol as having a 15 mph stall. Not true as they caveat it in brackets saying "power on". This is not true stall speed. True stall is power off when the aircraft stops flying.

This is a technique called flying the "Backside" of the power curve, used back in prop days on carriers.

On a pilots first carrier approach the tail hook would not be lowered and a touch & go ("Crash & Dash") would be performed.

The rule was to NOT look at the airspeed indicator as you got back over the water , but of course everyone did.

50K showed on the dial, T -28 , would ordinarily be in full stall at 50K , but a BIG engine (for the weight) kept the aircraft in the air.

Pensacola class, 17-64

FF

 

Good input Fred

The backside landings left a lot to be desired but, as you said, are OK with a BIG engine. For this drill we're using the power off stall speed to insure that we can make a "missed approach" if necessary. In that tail hooks would mean beefing up the Storch, and thus necessitate higher landing speeds, we're counting on the natural performance of the aircraft to do the job. What is planned is to mark off a 150 x 45 foot runway on a grass strip with chalk lines and see how much of it we use in actual take-off and landing maneuvers. Hopefully less than half of the runway will be used assuming a 10 knot headwind. This will provide some meaningful data as to how small of a vessel (barge) that can be used in the experiment. It should prove to be interesting. The Slepcev Storch that we are using has a 100 hp inline 4 cycle, 4 cylinder engine that is reliable. I also have some T-28 time off of a grass field mmany years ago.....nice aircraft.

 

How's about seeing if there are still some 'woolworth's carriers' hanging around from the second world war, save a bundle building what you want (and if that fails go get the plans from whoever designed the bloody things - they worked and did just what your all after, a small (very) aircraft carrier to carry a couple of aircraft, based on a merchant ship hull!

there's nothing new under the sun

(boring old fart taking away all our fun!!)

 

None of those exist, they have all be scrapped. Plus they would be a total rust bucket if they still existed.

Any more thought on this idea? Now that I look at it, an arresting system isn't totally rediculous, you have about 200 ft to slow a 2,500 pound object from 40 or 50mph. That's not bad at all, with a simple hydraulic system you could make it pretty smooth and consistant. Taking off wouldn't be difficult with a larger engine. That coupled with a good slow speed wing it dosn't seem like much of a problem at all.

 

We concluded early on in this thread that it was very do-able, IFF you were not demanding modern jet performance from the airplane. Plenty of small propeller aircraft would work, many of them even type certified.

As soon as you demand say 400 Kts and 1500 nm range from the aircraft, all bets are off; you wind up with something that looks frighteningly like the USS Ronald Reagan

Jimbo

 

I was thinking somthing like a Beech Mentor,



It would appeal to more partys than we might think, Coast guards, limited governments, private millitary contractors and even the rich guy that wants the wow factor.

 

To hell with rich guys. Toot's original post strongly implied doing the thing on the cheap.

I don't think anyone has mentioned ultralights yet. Whoops, I just did.

An ultralight without an undercarriage should be able to land on the cockpit of a small powerboat running at modest speed. A two engine job would avoid the embarrassment of chewing up the landing crew who would be trying to hold the thing down once the pilot leaps off and changes underwear.

You'd want to be able to either clamp the thing down or kill the lift quickly and a folding wing would be practical. A bit like hang gliding on water skiis, whatever they call that.

 

Here is one that gets off really rapidly and folds to a small package.
The wing folds to a tube 1 1/2 ft in diameter about 20 ft long.

The frame folds small enough to go down a large hatch.

A 15K boat would not require either catapult or arresting gear.

FF


Ultralight Tukan Trike


Configuration Single or 2 Place Tandem
Empty Weight 254 lbs.
Gross Weight 750 lbs.
Wing Span 35 ft.
Wing Area 170 sq.ft.
Standard Engine 447 Rotax
Power 40 hp
Cruise Speed 45 mph.
Rate of Climb at Gross Weight 800 fpm.
Take Off Distance 100 ft.
Landing Distance 100 ft.
Kit Type - Build Time Fully Assembled
Field Set up from trailer 35 minutes 1 person
First kit delivered 1989
Contact Information
J & J Ultralights
11020 89 th Road
Live Oak FL 32060
386-330-2007

 

I thought we were talking 'aircraft carrier' aircraft carrier not Ultralight landing pad.