--- On Fri, 7/22/11, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote:

> Vehicles doesn't say that there is a
> minimum weight for submersible
> craft, but it doesn't require a house rule to make your
> craft heavy
> enough. The displacement is 62.5 lbs. times 'non-fake'
> volume, and 
> the ballast tanks are 20% of that. The 'fake' volume are
> all those 
> multipliers which are due to shape -- slopes, streamlining,
> etc.

MA Lloyd addressed this in his unofficial vehicle expansions after VE2 came 
out. IIRC, a sub need to be at least 80% maximum displacement or it couldn't 
sink.

> Say I've got a plane with 80 cf component volume in the
> body and two
> 10 cf wings. With a submersible hull, very fine lines, and
> very good
> streamlining, the body becomes 162.5 cf, but 62.5 cf of
> that are due
> to the streamlining and lines. 

This may be where the planes of Sky Captain start becoming impossible while the 
Russian project remains vaguely plausible -- the Russian fyling boat, as best I 
could tell, only flooded the pontoons, with wings, budy and engine pods sealed. 
The conning tower may or may not have taken on water to improve submerged 
performance.
 
> Components plus ballast tanks are 100 cf in the body, and
> 2*10 cf in
> the wings. The remaining 62.5 cf are 'virtual volume' to
> account for
> the sleek shape. So the plane will displace 7,500 lbs., and
> the 
> ballast tanks can hold about 1,250 lbs. of water. That
> means Ewt has
> to be about 6,250 lbs. and crew/fuel/ammo should be less
> than 1,250
> lbs. to make sure it can sink with full ballast tanks and
> float with
> empty ballast tanks, no matter how much fuel is left.

A lot depends on how far you want it to go down. While the planes in Sky 
Captain were fairly deep-diving, the Russian sub was not really intended to go 
below periscope depth.

You may want to look at how Graham Hawkes _Deep Flight_ submersible works as an 
alternative.

http://www.gizmag.com/hawkes-explains-how-deep-flight-flies-underwater/17275/

> I can afford roughly 400 kW of engine, which gives 1,200
> lbs. of 
> thrust. Hydrodynamic drag is 19 and top water speed is 24
> mph.
>
> Stall speed will be about 95 or so. It won't work that way
> ...

Bigger wings, STOL wings!
 
> A submersible helicopter or autogyro? Jet engines for extra
> 
> thrust? More wings, less body? But that would reduce the
> dive 
> volume.

The biggest problem I see with the Sky Captain planes is the transition between 
land and water. 

Brandon
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