Thomas replied to me: > > On special airports. A reinforced concrete landing pads and > > ramps to the oversized maintenance hangars. Other than that, > > the only reason to land is bulk resupply of jet fuel and > > ordnance, which might be on improvised forward bases. Then > > the fans must keep turning to take most of the weight. > > THIS scenario calls for cranes for the crates - if possible at all … > > When the carrier is hovering close above ground, the wind speed on ground, > caused by the fans, must be enormous. I doubt that someone could walk close > to it - or stand nearby.
My idea was to actually touch down and to shut some of the fans down, keeping the others running to take weight off the ground. The Sky Carrier has a huge wingspan, 240 meters. if the inner fans are off, someone approaching along the centerline will be 100 m from the nearest operating fan. > Perhaps the carrier should have that thing that hovercrafts > have (sorry, can't remember the correct term; that thing that > keeps the air under the hovercraft), just for this manoeuvre. I'd rather cancel the forward landing option. A skirt would be just extra mass and drag during normal flight -- a TL8 flying carrier is a very marginal design anyway. Not much room for extra gear. How many aircraft would you drop to make hovering possible? A TL8 hovercraft aircraft carrier (or a SES) would be a whole new ballgame. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bora_Class_guided_missile_hovercraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zubr_class_LCAC Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
