Beginner making first craft
Silenthalo
hovercrafts, and hovering in general... i built all those little paper
plate/balloon things as a kid, and even my own remote controlled
hovercraft which was built from an oversized banana split bowl,
overpowered computer cooling fans and the innards to my radio shack 4x4
truck, which unfortunately met its demise when i tried to drive it over
water hahaha... (i would assume its still down ther somewhere).
Well anyways, my point of posting is due to a sparked interest in
recreational hovercrafting... after a friend was telling me how he was
building a spud gun for which he baought plans from
http://www.xinventions.com , i was looking at the site to see that
these 2 young kids had built themselves a small amateur hovercraft
using only a leafblower and a weedwhacker engine... So needless to say
that due to my interest in hovercrafts, i was very suprised to see that
a hovercraft capable of carrying a person was so easy to accomplish. I
immediately knew that i had to try my hand at it... i have to know what
it feels like to float around on a cushion of air.
So my question to you all is: Could anyone point me in the right
direction, or even toss me some ideas as to what i would need in order
to build myself a small first-timer craft... possibly a little more
advanced than that of xinventions, (powered by a little more than a
leaf blower haha) and possibly where i could get such things (i have no
clue where i would go about getting props/lift fans, how to mount them
to the motors, etc.) Again, its my very first time, so im not really
looking to dump 1,000's into this venture as of yet, but just something
very basic which which i can learn the basics of floating on air, and
driving a hovercraft. Any help or advice you can give me would be
greatly appreciated guys... im really looking forward to building my
first craft... perhaps you can give examples of the first crafts youve
built...
Thanks for the help guys! Talk to you all soon, and hopefully ill have
some pictures and videos of my first crafts initial voyage to post up
in the spring!
Ken Roberts
in order to get past the leaf blower stage you have to put quite a bit more into
it.
my first proof of concept craft was a 4x8 sheet of 1/4 plywood with a blue tarp
material bag skirt of my own design. we (i had a buddy from work) used 1x2
boards as tack strips to hold the skirt on. there was maybe 9" between the tack
strips, and we used a couple shop vacs for lift.
this worked well enough that we could sit on it and scoot ourselves around the
garage floor.
the leaf plower would probably be a lot better, both because you can go further
from the garage and because there is probably more air flowing through one. a
leaf blower is concentrating on getting a little bit of air moving really fast
though, which isn't what we're really after.
for lift, you want a decent volume of air being pressurized. so the lift system
is a really high volume compressor, with a low pressure increase. generally
this is around .15 to .2 psi for real recreational hovercrafts. the less the
better.
for thrust, you want a high volume of air moving in the same direction--mass
flow. a thrust propeller is doing pretty much the same thing it would on an
aircraft.
if you want to get more serious than the leaf blower, there are a few plan sets
that you can get of hovercrafts that genuinely work, that you can take out on
water. i'm a big universal hovercraft fan, http://www.hovercraft.com. you can
go to http://www.hoverclubofamerica.org and find all sorts of places to get
plans or hovercrafts.
you might want to get a ride in a real hovercraft before you go much further.
it's about as different from the leaf blower hovercraft as a bicycle is from a
porsche. if you go to the hoverclub link you'll find hovercraft events being
posted, and you can show up at one of them that's close to you. you might not
get a ride, but generally if you talk to somebody about your ideas and all,
somebody might give you a ride. it's up to the individual though, since these
are personal property and the homebuilt ones cannot be insured in the united
states.