Island Engineering News!

January 2006Rough water sea trials are currently being performed on the X-Craft. More as it develops!!!

December 2005Sea trials have been performed on the X-Craft. The system has proven itself to be extremely quiet- producing the highest recorded gains we have ever successfully applied. The active Skegs improve course keeping by a large margin. This is a significant development- if you have experienced poor course keeping perhaps we can help. Seas have been relatively calm during trials which seems to sometimes plague us motion control folks.....but many of the crew have noticed the reductions.

April 18,2005T-Foils, interceptors and active titanium skegs are now installed on the LSC X-Craft and it has been launched. we've delivered a custom tender lift to Constellation Yachts, as well as trim tabs for the Franzen 56 Ft monohull shown on the Projects page. 

September 7, 2004 Island Engineering has been growing so fast, it's hard to keep up. We've delivered and tested several systems on motor yachts, delivered model scale hardware as well as the full scale 3.75M² T-Foils for the USN LSC X-Craft, and are now designing and building active titanium skegs as well.

July 16th, 2003- much news! Little Time! Island Engineering Inc. has now purchase a seat of Algor FEA software, which we are using on all our new projects for analysis, as well as 2 seats of SolidWorks! So much work to do, so little time!

January 16, 2003   We took the MM56CX  DAT (Dynamically Assisted Trimaran) for another test run. The temperature is below freezing here,  and although we don't have heat installed, we were pretty comfortable in the enclosed cabin, so I'm leaving the weather applet running on the home page.. The Potomac was in a classic glassy Chesapeake winter condition, with waterfowl on the water even very far from shore.

January 3, 2003  Time to update the web site and prepare for the new year!

Dec. 20, 2002, delivery of the test report for Nov. 25, 2002 Those two days resulted in a report of about 235 pages. Glad to deliver it before the Christmas holiday! 

Nov 25, 2002  Two days of flying the BWB equipped MM56CX with visitors have resulted on many megabytes of data, a new speed record for the BWB equipped MM56CX of 32.3 Knots (37.15 MPH), with 5 passengers, (8.16  Metric Tonnes) powered by 2x 250HP Yamaha engines. The wake wash is incredibly small as shown in the following series of photographs taken Nov 26, 2002;

 Nov 9, 2002  We flew the BWB equipped MM56CX at speeds varying from 22 to 28 Knots, acquiring 31 Megabytes of dynamic pressure data on 64 channels, complete with corresponding 16 channel i-DAS vessel motion and propulsion thrust measurement and synchronously acquired GPS!  

The vessel handles exceptionally well with the Spectrum system making it feel like a much larger boat.

Nov. 4, 2002  Launch of the BWB equipped Hybrid Hydrofoil test craft, with subsequent flight of 23.5 Knots at 100% lift fraction with no, I repeat, NO ill effects! Expect much more information in the near future, and far more frequent updates to this website!

We are pleased to announce the addition of Bob Morazes to the Island Engineering Staff. Bob brings a tremendous amount of additional experience and technical know how to our staff. Welcome, Bob!

   Island Engineering is set to launch the MM56CX hybrid hydrofoil testcraft with a new foil system- a blended wing body designed by Navatek. This body/foil combination replaces the main foil system only. The pods are instrumented with 64 dynamic pressure transducers,  for confirmation of CFD codes previously run to predict the system performance. Simultaneously, our own DAS software will be monitoring vessel motions, controlled by the Island Engineering Spectrum flight control system. Weather (rainy and Cold..) has delayed final fairing and painting. Launch is imminent anyway, due to the resilience of the Island Engineering Staff! Stay tuned for further developments!

    This of course, is one of our favorite activities at the moment!