So now that the site's live, and shit's off to the races, and I'm allowed to show a little bit of the awesome project I've been working my ass off to crush, these last few months, lemme share a little bit more about the electric wing-in-ground-effect craft now known as a seaglider.

This has been an absolute dream project for me, the type of thing I've been waiting years to be a part of. If you squint at it, you can probably see hints of stuff I was trying to do almost 20 years ago, with my thesis model at CCS:

Like the Porsche 977 Bergsteiger.

Stuff like composite, stressed-skin over a frame, electric propolusion, great visibility, access, aero everything, and functionality. Oh, and racing proto looks:

I don't have to explain ekranoplans here, y'all know what I'm talking about. But now that batteries and motors are starting to enable realistic packages, the time to take advantage of ground-effect flight looks to be here. Plus hyrdofoils like an AC75.

So, what the hell does this process look like? It starts with a bunch of meetings with aero engineers. They handed me their initial CAD swag, which looked appropriate for Rip Riley

I started with design research and sketching.

First trying to stick close to the engineering package, then, after receiving permission to push it more, about 300 more sketches.

Until finally hitting the key sketch, that combined all the meetings with aero and hydro engineers, and my own pushing on design attributes, we get to the key sketch, the one that gets buyoff. The right one.

Then comes CAD. In this case, it was all Solidworks, because that's what I pay for. It's not the right tool for the job, but like Rumsfeld said, you go to war with the army you have.

Along the way, you do a ton more meetings, tweak as much as possible as fast as possible, throw a bunch of shit out, lose a couple motors, and work until 4AM, get up at 7, and keep going. Rinse, repeat.

Once that's right enough, it's on to pretty renderings. When you've been working on making products look real in a studio environment for like 15 years, it's a REAL BIG switch to a 12-person craft in a real environment. FUCK! Lots of hair-tearing until there's ANYTHING you'd be ok with showing. And do it in the middle of the Texas Snowstorm Massacre.

Keep working at it...

Until you get to the point that you can show something that's starting to look real enough. Pull in all your photo experience, material experience, and flying experience, and just try really hard to make it look right.

And then, when you have a few minutes while making Sunday morning breakfast with your daughter, you try really quickly to make a Miami Blue GT3 paintjob just for funsies

Like I said, this project is kinda the culmination of everything I've wanted to do since I was a kid: make clean-powered things, things that fly, forward-swept wings, wings that move, biomimicry, and just good design. There's enough bad design out there, and I don't wanna be part of the problem. This is, finally, just the start.

Thanks for listening/reading, Oppo. I wish Davey G Johnson were here to see this. Y'all are just the best people. You're awesome.

So I'm very suddenly involved, to the point of directing, the design effort for a thing that may or may not fly.

It's too much real work to do in the time we've got, but it's the sort of project and thing I've been wanting to do/be a part of my whole life, so I'm throwing my effort at it.

No idea whether it'll come to anything, but I'm doing my damndest to make it what it needs to be in order to succeed. In the meantime, here's some scribbles from the holidays, farting around with kids and talking about design and drawing.
(SAAB)

(Honda)

(Alfa)

(Someone on Oppo)

And here's an old sketch or three, for reminders:

Editing to add a couple of SAABMiatas that I sketched up one day, when I asked Oppo for sketch suggestions and I did what I could:

Aaaaanyway, I'm gonna be overwhelmed for a while, but I hope that 2 months from now I'm able to show a little bit of a thing I'm now building and directing, and hopefully soon there will be parts in hand. It's weird to share stuff that isn't like crisis-of-the-moment, or whatever, but I've been with y'all since before the Kinja switch, and maybe I can dig up some of those old things at some point, too. Points are: Thank you, Oppo. All of you.

I don't really have anything of import to say. Just gonna throw out a couple old-Oppo-related sketches and say, once again, that I am thankful for all of you.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for making this place. Thank you for being you.

/sappiness

@essextee

Yep, Ford and Ghia made a Tuareg back in 1978/9. Obviously not spelled quite the same way that VW did it, nor the same kind of vehicle-- this one's a Fiesta.

Ford got it into their heads to have Ghia work up a regular Fiesta for Dakar-style desert running, jacking up the suspension, fitting 26" tires, and doing the kind of add-ons that are all the rage with safari-ed up Porsche crowd.

I've had this tab open on my laptop for like 2 months, and I guess now's the time for a random old-car photodump. I fuckin love this thing, and figured some of you might, too.

Looks great in b&w:

There's your random old concept car dose of the day.

I'll be able to do a longer writeup on this project on Monday, but since the site went live yesterday, I'm finally allowed to show y'all one of the things I've been working on recently!

Working on this has been like, the project I've been waiting my whole life to do-- electric ekranoplan!

I've been busting my ass for the last couple months, as the sole ID-- from sketch to CAD to renderings, and now I'm allowed to show it, so-- there it is.
This is the 10-passenger version, which has had a lot more put into it than the 50-passenger, but I'll be working on that one, too.
Here's the website, which also features a little animation done by a small team based in Houston, and more of my renderings.

@gmporschenut-also-a-fan-of-hondas @pip-bip @Nauraushaun @StreetsofPerth
I just wanna take this Opportunity to shout out all of Oppo for being awesome. Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires, and everyone checks in on everyone.

@Curators

Not mine. All shamelessly stolen.

AMX?

This works so well it kinda breaks my brain.

Paging @OPPOsaurus-WRX

The mundanity makes it work.

...ok, that's enough for now.

Edit: No, NOW it's enough

@hfv

@grindintosecond He made it over for about a day, before starting some shitstorm.

@nowhere I want you to squeeeeeeeze, SQUEEEEEEEEEZZZZZ

@nth256 @Qaaaaa @ranwhenparked

Hard to believe that's a Fiero under there, but then you see the interior.

@mybirdistheword

I had no idea they were still making this shit.

@snakesm13 $11,850.

@hfv I've actually seen one of these on the road! I think it might have been on NPoCP a few years ago; the seller was in Austin, and I had driven next to that very car a few months prior.
It looks exactly as bad in person as it does in pictures.

@pip-bip probably rebar.

@just-jeepin Weak sauce.

@wbizarre Somehow the sense of scale gets lost; the Prelude seems bigger than it should, or something. I know there's a pretty big perspective difference in the photos.

@davesaddiction @EL_ULY wins simply for being 100% SUPER-POSITIVE ALWAYS

@ttyymmnn @davesaddiction @Just-Jeepin I had the spaceship version, and played the hell out of it, usually on airplanes.