Kite driven WIG.... Possible?

Agreed, please see my reply above regarding how I completly missed the short comings regarding anything but downwind. Kite is out for now

 

Dejay, I have taken yours and others opinions on board as it makes sense. Be great if you followed how the poject is evolving. I have taken away the kite from the concept and following a powered ultralight homebuild path. It will be fun to build

 

I wish! I would have to put up a Tantric massage ad for the tourist gyals then maybe I can afford one . Making it look pretty always end up being the priority in my projects. Should see the bass guitar I am building atm. Took me over a year to carve the body out of very very hardwood with a scapel

 

Mr E, really appreciate your safety concerns. Do you reckon it some of those issues can be worked with and minimised? Hey man soft drinks are seriously bad for you, take up the hard ones

 

If you build one of these I'll be jealous because in the US you don't need a pilots license and can just build some plan for an ultralight. Here in Germany it's all heavily regulated you need pilot license for everything and even watercraft you can only land and take off at special "water airports". And if you want to build something yourself it needs a type certificate which costs a lot of money. So what you can build yourself is limited as well. So it's all very involved.

Of course safety is no joke. So you'll need to find some plans that have been tested enough to be deemed safe. And still should do some flight school.

Wait, you're Australia lol. How is the ultralight situation there?

 

To be honest I havent looked up the regulations. Attaining a pilots lic. sounds cool though

Anyway, with kite out of the pic... I started a new thread and consolidated the current discussion there
Exofish!....a WIG canoe https://www.boatdesign.net/threads/exofish-a-wig-canoe.65590/

 

Well, as you would be aware, ultra-lights, and that is what this would be, are often in the news for unhappy incidents, the main reason I think is they fly at very low speeds, and thus very sensitive to sudden wind gusts, imagine coming in to land at 50 knots and with little wind, and a sudden gust from behind, you lose most of the lift, and you drop. You might get away with that with height, but near the surface it becomes a hazard.

 

Gravity is a mixed blessing, without it we would drift off into space, but it seems to have a particular disdain for "toy" aircraft, routinely rudely imposing itself on them. I am no expert on aeronautics, but it seems to me the snag is the low speeds these aircraft operate at, so any substantial or unexpected wind gusts change the dynamics too much for predictability. You can see these things (powered gliders with underslug "bathtubs") do exist, but what the tolerances are with rough water landings and take-offs, needs good research