I believe the reason they were float planes is because there weren’t any land runways long enough. I think they would have loved a 12 thousand foot paved runway so they could ditch the bulky floats.
And I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure doubling the airspeed quadruples the drag but requires 8 times the power. (Drag goes up with the square of the airspeed and power needed goes up with the cube.)
Do you have any cites for this? I provided plenty. I examined the specs of the aircraft that raced, and none of them had outrageous wing loadings, but were in line with other high performance
I quoted buographical information on Schneider which explicitly says the reason he wanted it to be a seaplane race was because he thought seaplanes were the future and were under-developed, not because planes would need to take off from water for runway length reasons.
The Supermarine S6B, the highest performance plane in the Schneider cup, had a wing loading of 42 lbs/sq ft, and a takeoff speed of about 80 kts, and a power to weight ratio of .386 lbs per hp.
That is right in line with many WWII fighters. For example, the F4U Corsair had a wing loading of 39 lbs/sq ft and a stall speed of 77 kts, so it probably needed even more speed than the S6 to take off. The Corsair had the same power (2350 hp), but weighed almost twice as much, so it would have had a longer takeoff and landing distance.
The Corsair could take off in 482 ft.
There are a couple differences between the S6B and the F4U that affect takeoff performance. The Supermarine had a fixed pitch prop. The pitch was very coarse, optimized for high speed. So at low speeds the prop wasn’t very efficient. The prop wouldn’t allow the engine to develop full power until the S6B had accelerated for a while. This would lengthen takeoff distance. The Corsair had a variable pitch prop. So it could develop full power from a standstill.*
The Corsair also had big, effective flaps. The S6B had no flaps.
The combination of takeoff flaps and full power was very handy for getting the Corsair off a carrier with a minimum deck run. Takeoff run length was unimportant in a racing float plane.
Also, floats plowing through the water are draggier than wheels on a hard surface. At least until the floats get up on the step.
*Although… with all that horsepower, there is tremendous torque. It wouldn’t surprise me if Corsair takeoffs start at less than full throttle. The Supermarine racers had left and right floats that were different sizes because of engine torque.
And yes, Schneider was trying to promote development of seaplanes.
OK, the WIKI page on this explains it. Thanks
I was trying to find a reference to that. I did find out they used them as radiators in their final version. pretty sophisticated stuff back then.
Not only were the tops of the floats used as radiators, most of the surface of the wings was radiator also. And the oil cooling system used the vertical tail.
An article that discusses some of the design details for S4 through S6B, including the different lengths of floats:
They did. So did other aircraft with those giant radial engines. In the book Baa Baa Blacksheep by Greg Boyington, he tells the story of a rookie Corsair pilot who was badly injured when he firewalled the throttle during takeoff and the airplane torqued itself over onto its back. Torque had to be managed carefully with those giant engines swinging 22ft propellers in front of relatively small planes.
Great book, by the way. One of the better biographies from the war.
Great link. interesting read.
From memory, the spitfire manual suggests that 7lbs of boost is adequate for take-off then you can increase to 12lbs for climb.
This article says it uses a 400kW electric power train and
the most power-dense propulsion battery pack ever assembled in aerospace with enough power to charge 7,500 phones.
The article doesn’t say so approximately how many hours of battery life would this give?
Taking their numbers at face value and using 10 Wh for the average phone battery, 7500 phones would be 75 kWh. Close to the size of a Tesla battery. Some phones have batteries as large as 13 or 14 Wh, so let’s just round up and give them the benefit of the doubt and say it’s a 100 kWh battery.
A 400kW load would therefore give you an endurance of about 15 minutes. Of course, they aren’t running the thing at full power all the time. At 65% power they’d have about 23 minutes of power.
So, it might just barely have enough endurance to takeoff, climb, do a speed run and land.
I’m not sure if the video (below) tells those here much they did not already know but it is a good channel and it is interesting. What I think is of particular interest is he notes that supersonic jets cannot take advantage of high bypass which has been the trend for decades in getting more fuel efficient engines. Supersonic jets are pure jet engines…no bypass.
Title: Will Supersonic Travel Ever Return?
The A-12 / SR-71 family of aircraft were more fuel efficient with afterburners than in regular flight. But those were hybrid engines.
That’s not the same as a high bypass engine using a large fan for fuel efficiency but the Concorde was always a tradeoff between speed and fuel economy.
Tradeoff??? In aviation??? 
With the Concorde you got speed, comfort, and safety at a higher cost.
With the Soviet version you got speed at a higher cost, lower safety, and lower cost.
This is interesting:
I hope these come with pilots.
I’d be surprised if these did not have a pilot (and the picture of one looks like they do) but I really do not know.
I’d think for starters you’d use pilots and then, if it works out, maybe move to pilotless sometime in the future. Again, just a WAG.