Roadfour SEAGLE water bomber

Manuducati

Manuducati

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A Belgian startup is working on a water bomber concept.

"Scooping smoothly​

SEAGLE is designed for safe operations in the most demanding situations. Scooping water from a sleeping lake appears as a quiet task for the pilot while scooping from a windy sea surface can be very stressful. This particular flight phase is obviously dangerous and always more risky than landing on the ground in any well equipped airport. The most innovative breakthrough of SEAGLE is the fuselage shaped with hydrofoils. This well known marine technology is making the perfect buffer between the aerodynamics flight laws and the hydrodynamics laws of scooping. Beyond the center of the fuselage is located the slicer that will load the SEAGLE safely."​


The Seagle

www.roadfour.com www.roadfour.com


According to this news article (in French), they need ten orders (at 60 millions € apiece) and 6 years to launch the prototyping.
detours.canal.fr

Seagle, l’avion belge qui veut remplacer les Canadairs pour sauver nos forêts

La startup belge Roadfour développe un avion bombardier d’eau destiné à s’attaquer aux « grands incendies », comme ceux qui ont pu sévir en Californie, en Australie et dans l’Ouest de la France aujourd’hui. Que l'oiseau se dépêche de décoller, le sujet est brûlant.
detours.canal.fr detours.canal.fr

Interesting concept...
 

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Quite innovative! Perhaps, too innovative... There were no aircraft with such hydrofoil arrangement and IMHO this a potential project's problem - to develop them for the real-size aircraft. Separate scoop is also not ordinary idea.
I could sounds pessimistic, but it's another attempt to made "DC-3 replacement". With CL-215/415 in the role of DC-3
 
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TomS said:
EDO tested hydrofoils (and hydroskis) on a Grumman Goose.
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You are right, and I'm not precise in my statement. But, as we see there were no series-produced aircraft with hydrofoil undercarriage - despite many successful experiments. Anyway, for SEAGLE it's particular layout of hydrofoils should be developed and tested extensively, as it's large aircraft and intended to use such undercarriage few times during flight over various states of water surfaces (and during water scooping with new type of scooper).

Curiously, just few days ago I found a French-produced small amphibian with hydrofoil - as primary device for take-off/water landing - Lisa Akoya.
lisa-airplanes.com

Hydrofoils : Seafoils, innovation by LISA Airplanes

The only plane in the world with hydrofoils, the AKOYA is a revolutionnary amphibious aircraft: a high-performance seaplane and airplane !
lisa-airplanes.com

I think, it's appropriate place to it - to show current "state of the art" in hydrofoils.
 
TomS said:
EDO tested hydrofoils (and hydroskis) on a Grumman Goose.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yolgS1bn7P8&t=108s&ab_channel=DavidQuam

Edit:" I will say that the sheer width of the fuselage on the Seagle reminds me a bit of the Catalina. It's got a notably broad planing surface compared to a lot of other seaplanes that have rather tall and narrow fuselages.
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Tall and narrow fuselages/hulls were a later (post World War 2) configuration designed to increase hull-speed.
Back during World War 1, flying boats (Curtiss and Felixstowe series) had wide hulls and huge wings to compensate for tiny engines. Curtiss hulls" planing surfaces were extended outboard of the cockpit.
Basically, a longer hull and water-line translated to less drag. Look at the difference between Martin's WW2 Mariner and post WW2 Marlin which share similar flying surfaces, but the late Marlin has a narrower hull.
 
Hydrofoils are great in theory but quickly collapse when they meet flotsum.
Consider how forest fires occur in the forests surrounding the lakes that firefighters (e.g. Catalina conversions) like to re-water from. How many floating logs and dead-heads can you expect to find in a lake surrounded by forests?
 
There is also sea operations that looks compromised.*

IMOHO they added complexity where it wasn't needed. A simple modern CFRP fuselage with ample of extra space thanks to count parts decrease and lighter airframe weight would have been sufficient to raise interest. Hydrofoils look cool but, as hinted earlier in the Design section, isn't needed for the entire aircraft.

Wrong architecture that will cost extra money to refine with plenty of needed market winning additions that will have to be canceled to fit the budget they have.

*some large lakes have also 1.2 to 1.5 meter waves in windy conditions. What are they gonna do when this happens? Work from home?!
 
riggerrob said:
Glad to see that they sized the cabin large enough to carry 6 X LD3 baggage containers. That will allow it to make some money during the off-season.
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As I understand it, most water bombers spend Mid-April through Mid-September on the North side of the equator, and the rest of the time down under.
 
It's great they spend a lot on sensors and effectors for the market. Probably, that's what will stand out out at the end from this endeavor (that where lies their peak innovation).
It has been decade that firefighting from Air has apparently been locked in the same pattern of SOP. A bit of modern tools like decision aid algorithms, specifically designed night vision, LIDAR and modern navigation aid would certainly be welcomed by the crews. But the competition will be hard. Most systems they have to develop can be evolutions from existing hardware in the hands of major defense/civil airframer. What is lacking is throughout domain development, involving sensors, effectors, space (for terrain reckon and direct link communications) instead of detailed design of components...
Without a system approach, via partnership, I see them only creating a market that they would only get a fringe of.
A fancy water bomber with unreliable hydrofoils doesn't bring much over what the market uses today.

The Canadair/De Havilland 415/515 are still available for long.
 
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TomcatViP said:
It's great they spend a lot on sensors and effectors for the market. Probably, that's what will stand out out at the end from this endeavor (that where lies their peak innovation).
It has been decade that firefighting from Air has apparently been locked in the same pattern of SOP. A bit of modern tools like decision aid algorithms, specifically designed night vision, LIDAR and modern navigation aid would certainly be welcomed by the crews. But the competition will be hard. Most systems they have to develop can be evolutions from existing hardware in the hands of major defense/civil airframer. What is lacking is throughout domain development, involving sensors, effectors, space (for terrain reckon and direct link communications) instead of detailed design of components...
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I mean, the water bombers don't need a lot of specialty sensors necessarily.

There is a lead plane that guides them in that has a fancy thermal imager installed, and plays "FAC-A" for all the tankers assigned to that line of the fire. This keeps the number of expensive sensors down to a minimum, usually only a couple per fire front.

Adding fancy sensors would greatly increase the cost of the aircraft, and this is all penny-pinching civilian government agency contracts.

I'm not sure they run the water bombers at night due to the risks of crashing. You'd have to add a terrain-following radar to the sensor suite as well as making an NVG-safe cockpit. While an NVG-safe cockpit is cheap and good NVGs are relatively cheap for aircraft stuff (~$5k each), a terrain-following radar would likely be hundreds of thousands of dollars, as it also requires an autopilot...
 
TomcatViP said:
Why would they have a TFR? Most of those a/c are IFR. They only need terrain reckon where it matters, hence algorithms with dynamically updated database, either from Space or other means and, my own suggestion, LIDAR.
Also NVG that can accommodate nearby intense fire and area with low reflection are probably not the cheapest ones. Probably that it would have to be a low level light television with automatic identification and tracking of items like people and vehicles etc...
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No, they operate VFR and very low altitudes, usually in mountains.

TFR definitely highly desired if you want to drop loads of water and not aluminum at night.

Honestly, thermal imagers would probably be better for the pilots than classic NVGs. But those are a lot more expensive.
 
TFR won't be very useful in operation, being not an omnidirectional sensor. See how the Mohawk use to operate at low alt.
Also, firefighter Airplanes are also mostly IFR for navigation purpose. They do not need TFR for cross-country flight ;)
 
TomcatViP said:
TFR won't be very useful in operation, being not an omnidirectional sensor. See how the Mohawk use to operate at low alt.
Also, firefighter Airplanes are also mostly IFR for navigation purpose. They do not need TFR for cross-country flight ;)
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They'd need TFR for dropping water at night.

Whereas today they only fly from first light to last light.
 
On the subject of night vision goggles .... civilian crop dusting helicopters have been using NVG for a few years now and their experience is starting to infiltrate fire-fighting helicopters.
It will probably be another decade before fixed-wing water-bombers use NVGs.
I wonder how effective NVGs are at looking through smoke??????
Is infrared better at looking through smoke?
 
riggerrob said:
On the subject of night vision goggles .... civilian crop dusting helicopters have been using NVG for a few years now and their experience is starting to infiltrate fire-fighting helicopters.
It will probably be another decade before fixed-wing water-bombers use NVGs.
I wonder how effective NVGs are at looking through smoke??????
Is infrared better at looking through smoke?
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I think thermals are better for looking through normal smoke. And if you think NVGs are expensive, wait till you see the cost of high resolution thermal imagers!
 
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