holy shit this is an insanely cool vehicle that I had no idea about, fucking Soviet Half-Life 2 airboat :sicko-yes:
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2023
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Wikipedia article about these.
Snowmobiles did exist in this time period, so I'm wondering what the advantage is. My guess is that with the technology of the 30s and 40s, this was actually a cheaper and easier maintain option than trying to make a vehicle with continuous tracks.
The article suggests "otherwise-disused vintage aircraft engines and propellers", so it might simply have been cheaper / easier to find a use for those.
You don't have to manufacture a transmission for one of these - the propeller goes straight on the crankshaft of the engine so that likely saves a bunch of labor time/materials. You're sort of limited to the redline of the engine, but if it's designed for high RPMs (rotary engines are great for this) feel like a that's not much of a limitation.