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Amphibious aircraft in flight over an island
As runways are a rare thing in the world of Stormworks and most missions revolve on and around the water, having an aircraft that is able to land and take-off from water will be a valuable asset for your Coast Guard empire. This article will guide you through the various types of seaplanes, their advantages and disadvantages, and design considerations when making them. (Article last updated for version 0.8.31 on 6 October 2019).
Variants[ | ]
There are 3 main categories of seaplanes:
Float-plane
Flying boat
Amphibious aircraft
Float-planes[ | ]
Regular aircraft converted with floats
Pros: relatively easy to make and convert an existing airframe with floats.
Cons: High centre of mass and unstable in rough weather, limited space.
Flying boats[ | ]
A flying boat over the ocean.
As the name suggests the construction is more related to regular ship/boat building including multiple watertight independent compartments.
Pros: Easy to build because of missing complex landing gear, typically plenty of room for utilities be it cargo, transport, radio, or radar equipment.
Cons: Missing landing gear means they will always be exposed to rough weather when stationary, large size means that the available space for landing and and takeoff can be very limited especially when wind direction is unfavorable.
Notes:
- Boats usually have a center of mass below the waterline to ensure stability and to help them to self-right if they flip over (capsize). This means that any forward propulsion for the boat which is built in-line with the center of mass would have to be below water. Unfortunately, propellers do not work well underwater (high torque tends to shut down the engine immediately). This can be avoided by building forward propulsion above the center of mass, however this off-center force will create torque which will pitch the boat down into the water, making it difficult to take off.
- One alternative is to use a pair of side-mounted tiltrotors. These can allow vertical takeoff and landing, and can also be angled so that the center of thrust points through the center of mass. Tilting the rotors/propellers also helps to get them above the waterline.
- A second alternative is to use a catamaran hull design with a pair of large, lightweight hulls. These can allow the center of mass to be stable above the waterline, providing space for propellers. However, if the vehicle flips (capsizes), it will be impossible to self-right unless some mechanism provides power to do so.
- A third alternative is to make a 'helicopter boat'. In this configuration, the rotor only needs to be above the center of mass, and the tail rotor can be in-line with the rotor to counteract its torque, so both can be comfortably above the waterline.
- A fourth alternative is to use a hydrofoil. Once the boat has gotten above the waterline, it can use a center-of-mass aligned propeller to continue accelerating as it brings its control surfaces above the surface to transition to flying.
Amphibious aircraft[ | ]
Amphibian beaching itself
These can be either float planes with landing gear for beaching and exiting the water via slipway (only at the 'TT' helicopter base), or flying boats with landing gear for take-off and landing on a regular runway.
Pros: Highly versatile in the amount of available bases to field these aircraft: Creative Base, Military Base, Mainland Airstrip, Arctic Airport, as well as the Small Airstrip Island and Helicopter Base for Small Vehicles. Also capable of refuelling on land, so can be more convenient.
Cons: These retain many of the disadvantages of being a float-plane or flying boat, so either a high centre of mass and poor stability on the water, or a large size making them tricky to use on cramped islands or near oil rigs.
Design[ | ]
Mass reduction[ | ]
Because of the relatively high mass of using regular blocks, getting seaplanes to float perfectly is not easy and means you will typically not be able to use paint blocks and other means for high quality decoration.
To get the weight down as much as possible, it is recommended to make extensive use of wedge blocks (0.5 Mass), wing front sections (5 mass for a 3x7x1 area) and small wing sections for hollow custom wings with integrated fuel tanks, or the gyro block (1 mass per 3x5x1 area means: 1/15=0.0666667 Mass per 1x1x1 while displacing a high area).
Small robotic pivots can also help, since they increase the buoyancy of a vehicle drastically when placed inside a sealed cavity. However, the more you add, the laggier the aircraft gets (due to the number of subgrids). It is recommended to use them sparingly.
Wind[ | ]
Wind can create higher waves as well as potentially flip your vehicle. Note that if you are landed in water 90° to the wind, you can expect that one wing will dip down into the waves becoming the new centre of rotation around which the aircraft will flip up and then go upside down. This problem can be reduced by using large floats at the ends of the wings extended down into the waterline. This will help to brace the aircraft against incoming wind and minimize the extent to which a wing will get lifted.
Takeoff[ | ]
Fin rudder activated and extended downward to lift the nose out of the water.
If you are having difficulties with water takeoff due to the high drag caused by the water, there are two main approaches you can use to take-off more easily: Fin rudders on the nose bottom can help to push the nose up from the water to ease a horizontal takeoff.
You can also change the thrust direction to go straight upwards for a vertical takeoff using a robotic hinge or robotic pivot. Note that tilt-rotor (or tilt-jet) designs should generally be built with the rotors pointing upwards during vehicle creation, so that with a hinge or pivot you'd have the range of motion to tilt the rotors anywhere between forwards and backwards. With this setup, the built-in pitch controls on the rotors can be used to manage pitch, while roll can be controlled by alternating collective or throttle on the rotors, and yaw can be controlled by pointing one rotor slightly backwards and the other an equal amount slightly forwards. Try to ensure that your center of mass is located in line with your rotors to prevent constant upwards or downwards pitching.
A tilt-rotor seaplane.
Usage[ | ]
For missions involving simple transport of people, or responding to burning vehicles, a seaplane will have the advantage of being faster than a helicopter while also typically being more fuel-efficient. However, missions which involve fire-fighting while hovering are obviously not feasible for seaplanes unless they use a tilt-rotor design.
Missions which can be completed with seaplanes: Arctic: Plane Crash, Stranded Swimmer Mainland: Stranded Tourist, Lost Reseach Swimmer, Transport Research Scientists, Rescue Researchers from Seismic Event (Tsunami), Lighthouse Rescue Maintenance Workers, Medevac Injured Fishing Person, Transfer Fishing Person, Fishingboat Fire, Medivac Shipworker, Medivac Rigworker, Transport Rig Inspectors, Downed Helicopter, Transfer Crew