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Hello everybody
it‘s a very nice day to me, because i have discovered another amazing vehicle (big thanks to my lecturer). Today i‘ve heard about ecranoplanes for the first time and i‘m amazed. It‘s actually incredible what a talented man can create. Russian engineer Rostislav Alekseev was very talented and created a machine, half ship, half plane – ecranoplane.
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And started from the biggest - KM, aka Caspian sea monster. It was about 92 meters long, weighed 544 tonnes fully loaded, and could travel over 400 km/h, only few meters above the surface of the water. The name Caspian Sea Monster was given by U.S. intelligence operatives who had discovered the huge vehicle, which looked like an airplane with the outer halves of the wings removed.
Monster „died“ the same year as its father R. Alekseev – 1980.
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It‘s amazing that such big machine can fly only 2-3 meters above the ground using only one engine. It became posible due to ground effect. Ground effect vehicles (GEV) fly above any flat surface, with the height above ground dependent upon the size of the vehicle. The important design principle is that wing lift is reduced as operating altitude of the ekranoplan is increased. Thus it is dynamically stable in the vertical dimension. Once moving at speed, the ekranoplan was no longer in contact with the water, and could move over ice, snow, or level land with equal ease.
Theoretically GEV vehicles can cary weight up to 40% bigger than normal planes. They are more economical, because they fly in only few meters height ( planes uses biggest part of energy for take offs and reaching of the normal travel height). Flying low gives another advantage – invisibility, enemy radars can’t locate ecranoplanes.
The most successful was ecranoplane Orlyonok(picture above and below). It could cary up to 200 soldiers or 2 fully equiped BTR tanks. In two hours time it could take soldiers to place 1050km away. Its max speed was 450km/h.
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Last was Lun ecranoplane. It was designed to destroy aircraft-carriers and act in cooperation with traditional fleet. It caried six M80 Moskit missiles:the P-270 Moskit (Russian: П-270 «Москит»; English: Mosquito) is a Russian supersonic ramjet powered cruise missile. Its GRAU designation is 3M80, and its NATO reporting name is SS-N-22 Sunburn. The missile system was designed by the Raduga Design Bureau during the 1970s as a follow up to the SS-N-9 "Siren". The Moskit was originally designed to be ship launched, but variants have been adapted to be launched from land (modified trucks), underwater (submarines) and air (reportedly the Sukhoi Su-33, a naval variant of the Sukhoi Su-27). The missile can carry conventional and nuclear warheads. One missile was enough to destroy any ship.
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In general these craft were originally developed by the Soviet Union as very high-speed (several hundred km/hour) military transports, and were mostly based on the shores of the Caspian Sea and Black Sea. The largest could transport over 100 tonnes of cargo. The development of ekranoplans was supported by Dmitri Ustinov, Minister of Defence of USSR. About 120 ekranoplans (A-90 Orlyonok class) were initially planned to enter military service in the Soviet Navy. The figure was later reduced to less than thirty vehicles, planned to be deployed mainly for the Black and the Baltic Soviet navies. Marshal Ustinov died in 1985, and the new Minister of Defence Marshal Sokolov effectively ceased the funding for the program. The only five operational A-90 Orlyonok ekranoplans built and one Lun-class ekranoplan remained at a naval base near Kaspiysk
These were amazing machines, but it‘s never easy for a new type of vehicle to become practical and easy to use. Soviet union collapsed and ecranoplanes become unuseful.However in the future it may reborn, there are rumors that Nato countries are working hard on project similar to ecranoplane and who knows what allready was made. Just look at this picture showing diversity of russian ecranoplanes, maybe it isn‘t true, but what if it is…
Vytautas » 2009 Lap 17 (Ant) 16:22 
At the moment i'm quite interested in McLaren MP4-12C. I think that we all remember its older brother the McLaren F1- legend, a masterpiece of automotive engineering. So i expect even more from the new model. Here is short, but nice movie about the development of McLaren MP4-12C: 
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but to do that we have to be very very lively and fill our forum with masterpieces of modeling 
