Hovercraft Windsurfing

You haven't fallen asleep while watching 'back to the future again' and thought it was the news have you?

You don't realize how funny that actually is. That could be Macro's brother

Volkswagen showcases zero-emission hover car

Volkswagen has unveiled a prototype "Hover Car", developed with input from the Chinese public.

The vehicle, which resembles a large glass yo-yo is currently on display at the Auto China 2012 show in Beijing.

The German firm's People's Car Project invited ordinary Chinese citizens to submit their ideas and designs for innovative new vehicles last June.

"The creative ideas from the "People's Car Project" give us a valuable insight into the wishes of Chinese drivers," Volkswagen China's head of design Simon Loasby said.

"The trend is towards safe cars that can easily navigate overcrowded roads and have a personal, emotional and exciting design."

With the help of Volkswagen's engineers three of the dream concepts have been realised with the "Hover Car" the standout for its space age design and environmental credentials.

The two-seater vehicle uses an electro-magnetic field to levitate above the ground and employs distance sensors to prevent collisions with other cars.

A joystick controls the vehicle's movement and it can even spin on its axis.

Importantly, the "Hover Car" does not produce emissions as it does not burn fuel.

Volkswagen also developed a "Music Car" which uses Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) to change the colour of the vehicle's exterior depending on the music being blasted inside.

The final innovation developed in tandem with Chinese netizens is the "Smart Key", a 9mm key which uses a touchscreen interface to "keep the driver up to date on the fuel situation, climate conditions and the car's security via the 3G network".

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/technology/8464757/volkswagen-showcases-zero-emission-hover-car

Passive stall indicators that allow for optimum sheeting angles already exist. They give precise real-time indication of boundary layer flow characteristics through a 1:1 visual interfacing link. One beauty of these amazing devices is that you can fit dozens on them on any foil, at any place on the foil, so you can use them to monitor twist and draft anywhere. As NASA says, these amazing things show "regions of strong cross-flow, reverse flow, or flow separation" and "regions of unsteady flow".

These amazing high-tech devices are...... bits of wool or dacron stuck to a sail and called tufts!

Sailors seem to assume that aircraft wings are vastly better than sails, but top aerodynamicists don't always agree. Mark Drela is a professor of aero and MIT and his designs hold the world records for human powered flight and water speed. He also helped design the America's Cup wing.

As Mark said once;

"Sails are wings in that they must provide lift with a minimum of drag,
but their design and operation is much more complicated. There are many constraints, the major one being a maximum heeling moment the
sail can be allowed to generate (analogous to limiting the root
bending moment on a glider). Exceed this and the boat falls over.
This is mainly what limits the sail's aspect ratio.

On an America's Cup boat, each sail's shape can be altered considerably
in many different ways by pulling on control ropes. Angle, twist,
camber magnitude, camber distribution, are continually adjusted
for each sail by a dedicated crew member. Makes a glider's trim
flap look kinda trivial." ((My emphasis)

We could make the advances you note (of course, old poly boards had rocker lines that could be adjusted on and off the water!) but maybe we shouldn't. As Mark Drela (who is also an active participant as well as a designer) notes, there's a lot more to making good sporting equipment than making it faster - convenience, accessibility, tactical aspects, feedback etc are more important.

Flying trains... you can ride one in Shanghai. I have, very fast, very quiet.

And perhaps even more important, managing the participants' acceptance of new ideas and technological progress:



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there should be a warning in the sub- heading
"Hovercraft Windsurfing" - Drink 12 beer before reading

this has done my head in