Dmitrii N. Sinitsyn was trained next to Rostislav E. Alekseev and participated to the development of the incredible big Soviet ekranoplans.
He left the CHDB a few years after Alekseev’s was fired and launched his own company to design first small river ekranoplans, then high speed transport flying ships.
In May 2001, the 5-seater Amphistar was certified by Russian Maritime Register of Shipping.
He was a keen analytical engineer and gives here a presentation on the analytical analysis of the stability and dynamics of flight of a ground effect ship, translated by Kirill V. Rozhdestvensky.
But before this, he shared videos of the Soviet and Russian accomplishments which were at the time a discovery for most of the attendees (this was before youtube). Take a seat, grab some Russian ice cream and enjoy…

This paper discusses an analytical approach of the longitudinal movement of an ekranoplan. It provides estimations of the different modes found in the longitudinal disturbed moment of such a vessel.
The experience of the author offers a good overview of the different coefficients that can be neglected -or not, and of their respective orders of magnitude or usual values.
The analytical results found here give the opportunity to understand the influence of the different parametres on the behaviour of the craft.

Hanno Fischer sadly left us in 2024, and leaves an impressive legacy of innovative planes and flying ships.
In 2001, he and his team had just certified the FS8 (now Airfish 8) with GL, and were developing the Hoverwing technology which would lead to the development of the Hoverwing 20 and WSH 500.
His conference was a masterclass of technical expertise mixed with a good sense of humour, and a real talent for explaining.

Wingships (WIG, Wing In Ground) utilise water as runways to reach their lift-off speed, which is determined by the wing loading. High Wing Loadings are desirable for high cruising speeds with inherent height and Longitudinal stability.
To build up the necessary dynamic air pressure under the wings, they need roughly 3 times more power to overcome the hydrodynamic hump-drag compared to the drag during ground effect flight. So it is necessary to develop suitable devices as Lift-off-aids in order to reduce the recommended power. With support of the German Ministry for R&D (BMB & F) Fischer-Flugmechanik (FF) has developed the ”Hoverwing - Technology” in order to further reduce the necessary lift-off power. The principle of this technology, for which FF has patent rights, is the building up of static air pressure between the catamaran float. After lift-off the dynamic pressure will replace the static pressure and the craft operates as a WIG with high lift to drag ratios.
FF is developing the ”Hoverwing 80”, with the target to transport 80 passengers at 100 kts. Some test results with a scaled down two Seater will be demonstrated by video extracts.

Edwin van Opstal is a trained engineer from Delft University.
In 1995 he launched the WIG Page, soon to become the main reference for ground effect information, papers and data. Edwin then launched S.E. Technology which was involved in the design of numerous projects, then launched Edenka, a small product development consultancy company based in The Netherlands.
Edwin gives here a great introduction to ground effect technology and all the aspects to be looked at when starting a project.

WIG is short for Wing-In-Ground effect. Ground effect is an aerodynamic phenomenon that is used by WIG boats to achieve high speed over water with minimum fuel consumption. The current paper will first answer the question what a WIG boat is and have a look at its history followed by an introduction to the aerodynamics of WIG boats. Then some attention is given to the different concepts that have been developed over the years, aimed at solving the particular problems of WIG boats : taking-off and  longitudinal stability. Finally some operational issues including classification will be discussed and commercial viability of WIG boats is assessed.

In 2000, a bunch of aeronautical engineering students in Toulouse met in the local Euroavia office (https://euroavia.eu/) and came up with the idea of organizing a major event to boost their activity and re-connect with the rest of the network.
They were crazy enough to agree on organizing an ambitious event gathering the main actors of the ground effect flying ship field.

Soon K. V. Rozhdestvensky and the Aquaglide team agreed, followed by the late Hanno Fischer and Gunther Jörg. Edwin van Opstal and Graham Taylor jumped in the (flying) boat – they had the best lineup possible!
Supported by SUPAERO, Air France, Dassault, AKKA Technologies, AGF, Verdié and AAAF, these young students had no choice but to organize the event, which was held in one of the main amphitheatre of SUPAERO – now ISAE-SUPAERO, in June 2001.

This would be the last time all these great engineers would be together. Yet this week of meetings and parties with students from all over Europe would prove a success.

Today (2025) flying ships are now appreciated for their frugality and versatility, and numerous projects are announced. Some excellent youtubers also created interesting concepts. Time to look back and enjoy some knowledge sharing from the fathers of the technology!

Stéphan AUBIN was one of the organizers of the event back then, and is now an active member of SSG AERO, especially in the ground effect field. It sounded like a good idea to gather and share all we could, and found out that most of the videos from the conferences were in good conditions, and could be digitized!

So each week we'll publish one or two video here and share it with our community on LinkedIn.
These videos are very rich material from the fathers of the technology, and are very relevant today!

We are sure you'll appreciate them as well as we did!

To carry on with the demonstration of GBS applied to turbomachinery, we are pleased to present the CAD issued of a design process based on thermodynamics specifications and design rules. The impeller is now ready for 3d CFD computation or integration inside the final product!

GBS: https://github.com/ssg-aero/gbs

#turbomachinery #compressor #blade #stage #opensource #design #software #CAD #engineering #engineer #geometry #mechanical

We are pleased to announce the release of our  open source library geometrical GBS.

ssg-aero/gbs: gbs is a c++ header library to build and manage NURBS, some optional module are used for visualization and export. This library is compatible with OpenCASACADE and has a python biding. (github.com)

In a nutshell GBS is a powerful C++ header library to manage BSpline geometries.
​For now its capabilities range from basic geometry creation in a rational o  irrational fashion:

To more advanced geometrical creation algorithms:

Points approximation:

Surface creations from profiles:

More technical show case coming.

All the best for 2019 !!!

Keywords: Aerospace Valley, electric aircraft, hybrid propulsion, urban mobility

SSG-AERO was present during the seminar organized by AeroSpace Valley, one of the French Aero Clusters. 
During one complete day, a complete overview of all the current developments aimed at reducing the aero carbon footprint and to change local mobility were presented and discussed.
Airbus, Safran, Thales and Liebherr Aerospace shared their accomplishments and how they prepared and envisioned this major change in the Aero transportation world.
Presentations also focused on the numerous hurdles on the way towards the electrification and hybridization of flying machines allowing free discussions with small companies.

Time was also given to prospection and science-fiction, with some very interesting concepts :

• Neoptera: a new type of convertible
• Volta: the first ever electric helicopter
• Vahana: Airbus vision of a convertible

We are very grateful to the Aerospace Valley team, which allowed us to be in the pool of small companies with a 20min slot to present our services !
We introduced SSG-AERO, focusing especially on

• our proven records in optimizing propellers and wings for recreational drones,
• as well as our experience in designing electrically driven machines,
• and finally our homemade tools which allow the creation of ever more complex efficient geometries.

For those interested, our presentation is available for download by clicking on the icon under these words...

SSG-AERO is proud the be a member of Aerospace Valley, one of the french cluster focusing on aeronautics.