Seaglider: Electric ground effect vehicle Viceroy begins test campaign
Regent Craft has completed its first Viceroy ground effect vehicle. The US company wants to use it to change mobility.
Viceroy ground effect vehicle
(Image: Regent Craft)
The US company Regent Craft has started testing its ground effect vehicle "Viceroy". For now, however, the vehicle only floats.
The Viceroy seaglider should be able to move on and above the water in three ways: swimming, floating on the water on so-called hydrofoils and finally flying above the water using ground effects. At the start of the tests, Viceroy will initially be on the water with a crew on board. Flying is to follow in the middle of the year.
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"Stepping onto the Viceroy Seaglider prototype from the dock for the first time was surreal", said Mike Klinker, chief technology officer and one of the company's founders. "I was honored to sit in the cockpit as it left the dock for the first time and testing began on the water. This was the first outing of a vehicle that will change mobility – The era of the Seaglider has begun."
The "largest all-electric flying machine"
The test vehicle has the dimensions of the planned series version. It is 16.75 meters long and has a wingspan of 19.8 meters. It offers space for twelve passengers and a crew of two, with a maximum payload of 1.6 tons. According to the company, this makes Viceroy the "largest purely electric flying machine".
The aircraft is powered by twelve electric propellers, six per wing. According to the manufacturer, the range is 180 nautical miles, or around 333 kilometers. The cruising speed in flight is 160 knots, the equivalent of almost 300 km/h.
The Seaglider, developed by Regent Craft in collaboration with Siemens, is a ground effect vehicle. It hovers just above the surface of the water, gliding on a cushion of air. There is no friction on the water and the buoyancy is increased.
First foil, then fly
To make Viceroy more efficient, it has hydrofoils. When they are inflated, they lift the Seaglider out of the water, making it significantly faster. This allows it to reach the take-off speed required for hydrofoil flight more quickly.
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Regent Craft proved that the concept works in 2022: During tests with a scaled-down version of the Viceroy, it went from floating to foiling and eventually took off from the water.
There were also ground effect vehicles in the past: In the Soviet Union, ekranoplans were built in the 1960s for amphibious missions and coastal defense, the so-called Lun class. The largest ekranoplane was the Korabl Maket (KM), also known as the Caspian Sea Monster. It was about 100 meters long and weighed 240 tons. It could carry a payload of around 300 tons and raced across the Caspian Sea at speeds of up to 500 km/h.
(wpl)
