Projects and Prototypes with tiltable/vertical floats

[hesham]

Hi,

http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1964/1964%20-%202827.html

 

[cluttonfred]

Neat, but I am not sure that I understand why these would be more desirable than ordinary horizontal floats.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Neat, but I am not sure that I understand why these would be more desirable than ordinary horizontal floats.

Vertical floats provide substantially greater stability in rough seas.

 

[Jemiba]

We had this before here, quite a while ago, but although I used the search function,
I couldn't find it again.
There was this picture from Avaition Week, I think, better explaining the reason,
than words can do .

 

[robunos]

found this from 'The Curtiss X-Planes' page 140.

Apparantly the idea was to add long slim floats to the nacelles of an X-19 type vehicle, allowing it to sit on the sea searching for enemy submarines. Curtiss built a test-bed from an old martin Mariner flying boat.

cheers,
Robin.

 

[Bill Walker]

Can't remember where, but years ago I saw an illustration in a magazine of a P5M with inflatable vertical floats, coming out of the tip floats and the forward fuselage.

I think the basic idea of this long term sea sitting, even in rough weather, was to use dipping sonar and reduce fuel consumption. The Japanese actually did this with the original Shin Meiwa PS-1 just resting on its hull. I guess the West Pacific was a little more forgiving than the North Atlantic.

 

[Stargazer]

Can't remember where, but years ago I saw an illustration in a magazine of a P5M with inflatable vertical floats, coming out of the tip floats and the forward fuselage.

Wasn't it rather the PBM-5 Mariner in the post JUST above yours? Or do you mean a P5M Marlin?

 

[Bill Walker]

It was a P5M Marlin, but I'm going on memory here.

 

[Jos Heyman]

Getting back to that PBM-5, information that I picked up a long time ago suggested that PBM-5 hulks (like the one shown) were used as crew quarters. This was supposed to have been in 1964 or so.
Actually that seems to make more sense to me because I really cannot see how an aircraft with those vertical floats could ever take off.

 

[Jos Heyman]

The plot thickens as far as the PBM-5 is concerned. In an effort to find support for my earlier mention of crew quarters etc., I found in Flight International of 4 July 1963 that the PBM-5 was fitted by vertical floats by General Dynamics/Convair (so not Curtiss Wright) in a study for the Bureau of Naval Weapons. The two floats supporting the fuselage had a diameter of 5 ft, and a length of 26 feet, whilst the wings ones had a diameter of 4 feet and a length of 40 feet.
The article further suggested that they did not retract.

 

[Stargazer]

What you're describing here would be consistent with the image we have above, except that the figures seem to have been inverted (the longer floats are the wing ones and the short and wider ones are under the fuselage). Don't forget: "vertical floats."

 

[Jos Heyman]

Made a correction as far as the 40 feet floats are concerned: 'fuselage' corrected to 'wing'.
There is possible a definitive article on all this in Naval Aviation News January 1964 at
http://www.history.navy.mil/nan/backissues/1960s/1964/jan64.pdf

 

[AeroFranz]

Good link, thanks Jos

 

[Bill Walker]

Somebody else found my P5M artwork in another thread:

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,3457.msg167037.html#msg167037

 

[piolenc]

If you look up "vertical float" on the DTIC server you will find at least some reports on an operational test of a small flying boat (a Grumman if I recall) that was tested with EXTENDABLE floats that assumed the spar buoy configuration at rest but could be retracted to allow the airplane to take off and land normally. Here's one of the reports: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/824113.pdf

 

[hesham]

If you look up "vertical float" on the DTIC server you will find at least some reports on an operational test of a small flying boat (a Grumman if I recall) that was tested with EXTENDABLE floats that assumed the spar buoy configuration at rest but could be retracted to allow the airplane to take off and land normally. Here's one of the reports: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/824113.pdf

Great find Piolenc,


it was Martin Marietta HRV design,and the aircraft may be from Grumman.

 

[HeavyG]

Looks like a Lake Buccaneer...

 

[Jemiba]

Somebody else found my P5M artwork in another thread:

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,3457.msg167037.html#msg167037

Then you probably made several other drawings, too, which appeared in Bradleys Convair book ?
Great to hear, they are just credited with "Convair".
It looks, as those vertical floats were to have been attached to the wing floats. Would they have
been tilted inwards for take-off/landing and flight, so resembling kind of thick struts ? Telescopic floats,
as on the Buccaneer seem not suitable to me for a larger aircraft.

 

[Stargazer]

Looks like a Lake Buccaneer...

I think it is. The Martin model number applies to the float system, not to the airframe used as an example...

 

[Jos Heyman]

Page 8 (18 in downloaded pdf) of the report suggests that the Thurston company was involved. This company was owned by David Thurston who had earlier worked with Goodyear (where he was involved in the GA-1 Duck) as well as Grumman (G-65 Tadpole). He had also been responsible for the Colonial Skimmer, a 1947/48 design. It is this design that, as the C-2 Skimmer IV, has been used in the depiction for the inflatable float study. Twenty of these were built and Aerofiles suggests that one of these was used in the HRV programme (viz N1001L), mentioned on the same page of the report.
Colonial, btw, sold all its assets to Lake Aircraft Corp. which explains the strong likeliness to the Lake Buccaneer.
References for this information are Aerofiles (entry for Thurston) and Johnson, E.R., American Flying Boats and Amphibious Aircraft (pp. 221-223, 249-252 and 283-284
Also, the report talks about an inflatable vertical float. The ones that we discussed earlier (Gyrodyne and the PBM pics) are made of metal, as far as I can determine, and seemingly not inflatable.

 

[Stargazer]

Very interesting, Jos, thanks a lot!

Colonial, btw, sold all its assets to Lake Aircraft Corp. which explains the strong likeliness to the Lake Buccaneer.

Hence the strong family resemblance between the Thurston Teal and the Lake Buccaneer... Thanks for clarifying that point.

 

[Bill Walker]

Somebody else found my P5M artwork in another thread:

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,3457.msg167037.html#msg167037

Then you probably made several other drawings, too,

Sorry, I didn't make the drawing, I just meant it was the one I had referred to several posts above.

From memory, there was a magazine article accompanying this illustration that described the floats as inflatable.

 

[Stargazer]

Not quite the same experiment, and not Gyrodyne-related, but here is an interesting experiment with a Grumman JRF-5 Goose and special Edo hydrofoils.

 

[Jos Heyman]

Interesting. Rene Francillon in Grumman Aircraft since 1929, p. 108 states:
"As part of the Navy seaplane research programme, the Bureau of Weapons also funded the testing of a Gruenberg super-cavitating hydrofoil system. A single hydrofoil was fixed beneath a modified JRF-5G (BuNo 37782, USCG 7782), small hydro-skis were attached to slanted attachments projecting beneath the bow, and the two blade propellers were replaced by three blade units. The practicality of the concept was successfully demonstrated during the summer of 1962 but by then the Navy was fast losing interest in flying boats and no further development was funded."
Based on other records I got, the particular aircraft was later sold as CF-IOA and was written off on 28 May 1964.

 

[hesham]

Hi,


here is a tilt-float concept for many aircraft,we can change the title of the topic
into; Tilt and Vertical Float Aircraft.


http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/3.43766

 

[hesham]

Hi,

the Bell D-2239 was a tilt-float V/STOL aircraft design.

 

[Nik]

Tangential, the ultimate tilt-float / spar-buoy conversion is surely the one and only 'Flip Ship'...

RP FLIP - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

On another forum, I've mentioned this unique craft to confound nay-sayers of big space-ships with spun habitats: Just takes some extra thought with the plumbing and other utilities...

 

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

Higher resolution images of the Gyrodyne RON Rotorcycle installation and footage of the Marlin setup while static, I was unable to find any evidence if this latter configuration actually flew.

https://imgur.com/dhxzv7A