Hovercraft Project

[sportbike]

Haha no, but they are turbo charged! If you have a plasma cutter and a welder you could put a snorkel on

turbocharged....now you are talking :-) Lets put my bike engine in that thing.

Project is looking good empty nester. Any idea on payload on something like that or how fast they will move?

[MigPlazArc]

turbocharged....now you are talking :-) Lets put my bike engine in that thing.

Yeah a 500 hp bike engine would work pretty good...But a turbocharged 15 liter with 400-600 hp stock!... Lets "chip" it and make it 750+

And I'd have to agree...That hovercraft is coming along great it looks like.

P.S. you may need more than bolts to hold that 15l Cummins in


Btw If you turn your hovercraft into a submarine I want to see a video of everybody's reaction to the strange turbulence under the water, thick black smoke bubbles coming to the surface, and the beautiful stainless steel "snorkel" air intake sticking out of the water!

[Jason]

Btw If you turn your hovercraft into a submarine I want to see a video of everybody's reaction to the strange turbulence under the water, thick black smoke bubbles coming to the surface, and the beautiful stainless steel "snorkel" air intake sticking out of the water!

Haha that would be awsome. Id also love to see that.. I could only imagine the look on some boaters face when this pipe goes past them puffing black smoke.

[EmptyNester]

Off a couple days because I drove a cotter pin deep into my finger (darn HF trailer kit). Nothing a couple hours in the ER and a couple stitches won't fix.

The next step I did (last November) was to build the duct for the lift fan. They recommend an 1/8" clearance between the fan tip and the duct wall. The wall is made out of 1/8" marine plywood. It's amazing how you can bend that stuff. You glass two pieces together, then glass the outside of the wall. After that you wrap it around a form.



The next picture shows the top deck after I cut a hole in the hull and fiberglassed the lift duct in it place.

[EmptyNester]

It does float. One of the strengths of the design is the bounancy of the foam. They say it can still float even if you cut it in half.

Some designs do have two engines. One drawback of two engines is that if you accidently cut the life engine instead of the thrust engine - you "plow in" (front starts diving underwater).

[DaveO]

if you accidently cut the life engine instead of the thrust engine - you "plow in" (front starts diving underwater).

In a two-engine configuration, the lift throttle and the thrust throttle could be mounted side by side with a horizontal tab on the lift throttle that overlaps the path of the thrust throttle, so that the act of reducing the lift simultaneously reduces thrust. You could reduce thrust without reducing lift, but you couldn't reduce lift without reducing thrust. There's got to be a name for that.

[zoama]

In a two-engine configuration, the lift throttle and the thrust throttle could be mounted side by side with a horizontal tab on the lift throttle that overlaps the path of the thrust throttle, so that the act of reducing the lift simultaneously reduces thrust. You could reduce thrust without reducing lift, but you couldn't reduce lift without reducing thrust. There's got to be a name for that.

At 45 to 50mph momentum would still be a problem.

[EmptyNester]

It's 14 1/2 feet long and about 6 1/2 feet wide.

The lift fan has 4 blades and is 22" in diameter. The prop for propulsion is a normal 2 blade prop and is 56" in diameter.

[MigPlazArc]

It's 14 1/2 feet long and about 6 1/2 feet wide.

The lift fan has 4 blades and is 22" in diameter. The prop for propulsion is a normal 2 blade prop and is 56" in diameter.

That ought to fly lol

[EmptyNester]

Not being a particularly artsy or talented at graphics design - I decided to go with a military look. I used "battleship gray" for the paint and I painted the props similar to military plane props. (Cheesy - but hey, it's the best I could do.) Friends have suggested I mount guns on it

The model is called the UH-14P, so I figured I'd do a big "UH-14" on the sides of the thrust duct.

[I_Love_Plasma]

It's 14 1/2 feet long and about 6 1/2 feet wide.

The lift fan has 4 blades and is 22" in diameter. The prop for propulsion is a normal 2 blade prop and is 56" in diameter.

Is the one 26 HP engine going to power all of that prop? Are you going through two gear boxes or just one with two output shafts?

[EmptyNester]

The thrust duct goes around the prop. If built correctly, they say you can get up to a 15% performance improvement. The first step was to build the form to bend the 1/8" plywood on. Then, cut the wood and fiberglass it together to get one long piece. The first picture shows the wood duct build on the form.

After that, you need to cut 2" foam to a specific arc to wrap around. It needs an arc rather than straight cut because you need to form the foam into a wing shape. So, compounding the precise arc of the plywood and the precise wing shape you form with the foam - it didn't go very well.

I got to the point of "this is no longer fun". So, I did the best I could just so I could move on. I ended up having to cut the foam into smaller chunks so I could work with it and get it to fit. Then, I either filled the gaps with foam or just glassed over them. Worst case, I can always redo it later and replace the one I did. A picture of it with the foam partially installed is below.

[EmptyNester]

After vacuum laminating the two layers of 2" foam, I used a hot wire cutter to get the rough shape of the hull. I cleaning it up with a "sure foam".

After the shape was complete, a wood strip was attached to the sides. It will be the attachment point for the outer side of the skirt.

After that was done, the top of the deck is shaped with a downward slope. In the second picture you can see a dent down the middle of the foam. I used PVC with holes drilled in it for distributing the vacuum. The vacuum was a little too high and it ended up compressing the PVC into the foam.

That was a pain to fill. I used epoxy and glass microspheres.

[EmptyNester]

After the hull is shaped, 1/8" marine plywood is attached with epoxy and vacuum laminated onto the foam hull. That's the layout in the first picture.

After the top of the hull is done, the bottom of the hull gets a foam "runner" around the edges. It's toped with plywood and will have a wood strip glued on for the inner skirt attachment.

The LP tank is to put weight on plywood expoyed into the hull. It is used for reinforcing the bottom of the hull to bolt the engine on.