Fun for the kids

This Hovercraft has had a pup. Check out http//hovercraftflightsforkids.blogspot.com/

Dying throws of my first hover

This is my first attempt at building a hovrcraft. It all came from the tip and given time, it all went back there too!!!! The squirrel cage fan is the type that is used in air conditioning a big building. They are mostly made of pressed steel. The fins are just a tight fit and pressed into the main frame. I asked around to find out what sort of a rev limit these things had and couldn't get a real answer. Orignally I'd put an 8Hp Briggs & Stratton motor on it but I couldn't it get out past half throttle. So I fitted a 250cc motorbike engine on it thinking I could use the gears and get higher revs in a higher gear but not over load the engine. It hovered well but when I split the air for thrust it wouldn't go foward so I changed into top gear and gave it some more throttle. That's when I found this fan has a rev limit. The little fins all came out of their press fit groves and landed in the bottom of the barrel. I still don't know what the rev limit is, but it's less than the output of the 250cc engine. And it was lots of fun.

Enjoy my little blog and please leave a comment PS If you happen to know the revs per minute of these type of fans please pass it on

On reflection

This was the second attempt at the lift fan and duct. The fan was just too small. We are now using a four bladed 34inch fan, home made from Universal Hovercraft plans. My plan was to build a hovercraft without using fiberglass & resin and it can be done, just not on my budget.

This is a shot of the air directer underneath to help the air to the back of the craft.

On the back you can see our first attempt at our thrust system. A 3ft 12 blade aluminium fan.

And here are the rest of our attempts at ducts or the rings thereof. We 've had the 3ft fan, a 5ft UH prop and now we have a 6ft7inch prop - also UH prop - but cut and stretched a bit.

This is Wind Dancer in 2007, before her refit. We found she was a bit on the heavy side and would'nt climb out of the hole or over the hump. So I started looking at making a bigger thrust prop. I'd actually got half way through cutting a wider chord 5ft prop when I discovered a variable reverse pitch propeller on U tube. This would be a great thing to have- brakes on a hovercraft!! It took a great deal of thought, but I designed a hub for myself. With some help from some friends to turn me up some things and work out how to put it all together - hey presto! Six months later we now had a variable pitch reverse hub. A further 18 months and 4 different blade types down the track we are getting very close now. More photos soon