Talk:Hydroplane (boat)

Untitled
This needs a disambiguity page for Hydroplane - the 'diving planes' as used on submarines

1920's?
In "The Great Gatsby," Gatsby owns a hydroplane, which is mentioned several times in the book, which was published in 1925. This article first mentions the 1950s. What was a "hydroplane" in the 1920's? Obviously the term must have been fairly popular at that time.

I found a few uses of the term "hydroplane" on the web to mean "seaplane" and several to refer to much earlier speedboats from the 1920s.

Also -- isn't there a relationship between "hydroplane" and "hydrofoil," which has its own Wikipedia page?

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Respaldo (talk • contribs) 22:35, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * "isn't there a relationship between 'hydroplane' and 'hydrofoil,'"? No. Except they both run on water, hence 'hydro'. And seaplanes were sometimes called "hydroaeroplanes" in the 1910-30 period. Trekphiler (talk) 02:27, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Allison/Rolls Royce
Allison is not and was never a division of Rolls Royce. Allison made airplane engines during WWII and was part of General Motors Corporation. Other divisions (automotive divisions) of GM made Rolls Royce "Merlin" engines under contract from Rolls Royce for production of airplanes during WWII.
 * I've fixed that. (Why didn't you...? Also, I'm unaware of GM building Merlns; they were licened by Packard...)


 * On a separate issue, the article could use some coverage of racing, which was the point of developing the boats, N? Started with WSRs & spread? And is now gov by the Unltd Hydroplane Racing Assn (UHRA). Trekphiler 12:52, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

There are many other types of hydroplanes other than the ABRA sanctioned types
The Unlimited Light Hydroplane Racing Association is a professional hydroplane racing series that can be found at http://www.ulhra.org. It is the fastest growing professional hydroplane racing organization in the USA with 13 new teams this year alone!

Huh?
The article says" vertical tail (similar to the ones on most modern airplanes) was gradually replaced by a horizontal stabilizer supported by vertical tails on either side of the boat and as of 2006 the horizontal stabilizer was mostly abandoned." It means the vertical stabilizer, I presume, but I'm insufficiently familiar with the boats. Fix? Trekphiler (talk) 18:47, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Summary isn't very accurate - doesn't mention lift.
"A key aspect of Hydroplanes is that they only use the water they're on for propulsion and steering (not for flotation)—when going at full speed they are primarily held aloft by a principle of fluid dynamics known as 'planing', with only a tiny fraction of their hull actually touching the water."

They don't use the water for flotation, but they do use it for lift, based on Newton's third law of motion. Water is forced downwards by the bottom of the boat as it skims the surface. The water exerts an equal force upwards, providing the lift which counteracts the boat's weight. Planing is just a term for lift which is happening at the surface of a fluid (rather than in it). So I propose it is changed to:

"A key aspect of Hydroplanes is that they use the water they're on for lift rather than bouyancy, as well as for propulsion and steering: when travelling at high speed water is forced downwards by the bottom of the boat's hull. The water therefore exerts an equal and opposite force upwards, lifting the vast majority of the hull out of the water until a point is reached where the weight of the boat equals the upwards force of the water at that speed. This process, happening at the surface of the water, is known as ‘planing’." 91.125.2.205 (talk) 07:01, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

No one's responded to this yet so I'm going ahead and replacing the summary of the article with this, missing out the bit I wrote about weight. 91.125.2.205 (talk) 17:28, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Info
I noticed that most of the information about the designs of the boats is based mainly on the history of the design. As an interested reader, it would be nice to see some more information about how the design affects the speed and amount of lift to the boat. The information given about this is very minimal. Ryanvanderway (talk) 22:09, 24 January 2017 (UTC)