Re: speaking of Ekronoplanes lately
so how did ground effect alter characteristics of plane.
Mostly by reduced drag if you're down in ground effect, which is when you're less that half your wingspan above the ground.
A lot of glider pilots used to use ground effect as a form of competition finish if the fields next to the airfield were flat.
I've done it in an SZD Junior (single seat training glider) at the end of a day's flying. We'd been launching from the far end of our airfield from the hangar and clubhouse, so at the end of the day i offered to fly the Junior home. I took a winch launch, and flew a normal circuit as if I was going to land where I'd taken off, but instead left the airbrakes shut and flew the approach at 70 rather than 55 kts, flattening out at 15-20 feet. I stayed at that height for 680m along the main runway. At that point I'd only lost 10 kts of airspeed, popped the airbrakes and touched down 200m further on, rolling to a stop near the hangar.
A Junior has a claimed glide ratio of 36:1 at 45 kts, so at typical flying height it would have lost just over 60 feet in flying the same distance at 45 kts, or 150ft at 70kts: Juniors are draggy little beasts and airframe drag increases as the square of the flying speed.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
