Nice thing I heard of a few years back was the phenomenon of ground effect.
This is a strange property of flight aerodynamics that means that when a wing is flying very close to the ground, or other flat surface, lift is greatly increased and drag reduced.
The essence of the effect is that all wings work by forcing air downwards as they move forwards. If however the wing is close to the ground this displaced air has nowhere to go. It can't go down any more so it backs up forming a high-pressure pocket under the wing supporting it almost like a hovercraft.
This effect means that you can build a skimmer craft with tiny wings that still has enough lift to stay in the air, as long as it stays within close proximity of the ground.
The other useful property of ground effect is the reduction in drag, the friction that slows all aircraft down.
In a regular aircraft one of the biggest sources of drag are the spiralling vortexes of air that develop behind the wing tips caused by the higher pressured air underneath spilling up from the wing tip. These tornado like turbulence patterns can slow down an airplane a lot in flight. However in ground effect the vortices have no room to form because the ground blocks their path. No vortices, equals about %50 less drag than in normal flight all other things being equal.
Using this effect it becomes possible to make vehicles with all the properties of the famous "speeder" hover cars so loved by Sci-fi authors and moviemakers. Oh they can't actually hover, but they move at high speed flying just above the ground in much the same way.
It is this effect that I utilise in the skimmer craft my characters fly in my racer series. (Incidentally anyone wishing to sign up as a pilot, could you leave a message here. So far I only have some npcs onboard some real racers would be nice too.)
Anyway, I submit the weird and wonderful world of Wing-In-Ground effect (WIG) craft to the faculty for tech debate.
Here is a link to a pic of an Orlyonok, a large skimmer made by the USSR in the 70s. I plan to make a story of these races some day, maybe a comic, and the Orlyonok will have a cameo, probably as a supply vehicle for the racing skimmers, which seeing as it was a heavy freighter is in character! 
http://www.hydrofoils.org/Egal/orlyonok.jpg
Bronzewing: "I say number One, my end is diving, what the hell is your end doing?""It thinks we're either a threat, food or a mate - it's gonna either kill us, eat us or hump us." |
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