Technofreak:

 

Note, I said passenger prop driven aircraft. I'm well aware that some prop driven aircraft (mainly military) have speeds in excess of 250 knots. Also I think you are confusing IAS with TAS. Most of the speed figures you see are TAS figures obtained at altitude.

 

At the altitudes these aircraft will operate at, TAS and IAS are pretty well the same. None of the turbo prop aircraft I am familiar with will cruise straight and level at 250 knots indicated, in fact most have a Vmo limitation of around the 250 KIAS mark. I stick by my comment about 290 knots being bulls**t.

 

My point is that turboprop aircraft are designed to fly at 250kt or less at low altitude because Civil Aviation safety (as in avoiding collisions) dictates it, not because there's a physical limitation. There's no point in designing them to go any faster. There's no shortage of prop-driven aircraft (whether turbine or piston) that can exceed 250kts, so it's clearly not a physical limitation of the propellor.

 

I didn't say WIGE cannot be done. It has been done in Russia for moving freight across large flat uninhabited areas. I said no one has done it for point to point passenger type of application and that adding electric propulsion wasn't going to enable the uses being talked about in that article. If you think differently I'd be interested to hear how you think it might work.

 

There's nothing inherently different about moving passengers vs moving freight. But I do agree that electric propulsion (or more correctly, batteries for electric propulsion) would add greatly to the difficulty. Presumably Regent have done their sums and figure that using ground effect to increase the efficiency of their craft means they can carry enough batteries for an hour of flight and still have room for 10-12 passengers.

However, there is a Moller air-car smell about this, with lots of publicity attracting lots of money, but as yet very little to show for it. And so far all they have is that they have just begun testing a 1/4-scale RC model. Let's assume they have already begun building their first prototype, and will have it flying in a year. That's mid-22. I think that's the soonest you might expect. That leaves them 2.5 years to build 25 aircraft (which is just for NZ... as I said there's also the English Channel and US East Coast), say one a month. Again, I think it's on the optimistic edge of doable. Maybe because they avoid the FAA, CAA, etc they'll avoid the huge certification cost and time associated with aircraft. I don't know how difficult maritime certification is. Or how good it would be at ensuring passenger safety.

Maybe if I have $5B in the bank I'd take a punt on this? Or if I had $1M in the bank and a desperate "damn the torpedoes" desire to get $5B?