zbhover

I just thought that some of you might be interested in seeing some of the woodworking that I have done on some of our hovercrafts, so here are a few pictures. I started building them when I was about 15, I am now 22 and have built 5 hovers, 3 which I designed.

The first 3 pictures are from an 18' hovercraft my dad and I built when I was in highschool. It is a foam core coved with 1/8" exterior plywood and the cockpit walls are the same plywood with common pine stringers.


The next several pictures are of a 30" prop that I carved for a 1/2 scale radio controlled hovercraft that I designed and built with I was 18. I carved the prop from a set of templates, and it is made from laminated 3/4" pine. I carved it with a chainsaw grinding blade and sander in a angle grinder. I didn't realize untill I was done carving it that I put the templates on backwards and carved a backwards fan Thats when I decided to design and build a foam prop for it instead, its the pink one..... I made up my own templates and carved it out, it was actually quite a bit faster to do, plus it was lighter and in the end it spun up within 20 or 30rpm of what I designed it to which was great.


The last set of pictures is another prop I designed, this time It was 48" dia and being made for a 27hp engine. This time I pre-cut each layer to its rough size and then dowled them all together for alignment, each layer is glued together with epoxy. I caved it with the same method as above. Eventually this prop got glassed, drilled, etc. With 27hp this prop pushing a 400lbs 12.5' long hovercraft me and up to one passenger to around 55-60mph.

Well Thats about it for this post.....

Talk to you all later.....

bye

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bobj3

Hi zbhover

Nice job ,, it looks like we are looking back in time to the Wright Bros.( Orville and Wilber Wright ) work shop..
Pls.post more picture when you get it flying down the road...


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challagan

Cool stuff! Hard to imagine this hovering but looks like you know what you are doing. Thanks for the pics!

Corey

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curiousgeorge

WOW! 55-60 mph sounds awfully fast for a hovercraft. How do you stop that thing?

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zbhover

Actually all 3 of the hovercrafts that those parts have been finished.

The pictures of the one with the plywood cockpit is an 18' long hover that I finished my senior year of highschool, and has since been sold. It was built from a set of plans. It had a ~100hp subaru engine on it and would do 75mph+ I only had it up to about 60mph after that I ran out of room to slow down and also ran out of guts to go any faster.... LOL It is the yellow and blue on in the pictures below.

The 4 blade fan in the other pictures was supposed to be for a 1/2 scale Radio controlled hovercraft that I designed and built the summer after I finished highschool. I ended up designing and building a 2 blade foam prop for it through. I have had this hover up to about 25-30mph and its remote controlled, 6'long and has a 5hp garden tiller engine on it. I actually have a 8hp heavy duty Kohler engine and some parts to build a supercharge for it and I am planning on supercharging that engine and putting it on the R/C hover. Everyone needs a supercharged radio controlled hovercraft right???? LOL There is a picture of it below. Its the white one with blue strips in the snow.

The prop in the last few pictures was for the first full sized hovercraft that I completely designed and built. I call it our Sport Cruiser and it has a 27hp engine pushing it and a 10hp engine lifting it. and will do around 55mph. Its the red one in the pictures below.

Yeah 55mph is fast on a hovercraft, exspecially when you are only about 8" above the water. You have to have a lot of room to operate at those kind of speeds because you have no brakes. We usually hover the IL River where we have plunty of room. If your doing under 30-40mph or so you can do a 180 and give it full thrust to stop, but faster than that you let off the throttle and slow down, also let off on the lift a little to create more drag, or use the trim wing to put down force on the nose and create a little more drag, etc.... Driving a hover is completly different than anything else because you have no traction with the ground.......... but its a blast!!!!!

bye

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challagan

That is just totally cool! Thanks for the pics!

Corey

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My Shop Website - Woodshop 51503
http://woodshop51503.tripod.com/

petersenj20

You're my hero. I made a hoverdisk with the kids a few years back, but there is no controlling it. We used an old rain poncho from my Air Force days. What do you use, if you don't mind sharing.

zbhover

When I was younger my dad and I built a leaf blower powered hoverdisk. It worked pretty good, our neighbors had a nice smooth concreat drive that was pretty steep. It worked real good going down the driveway. The only problem was that we only had a electric leaf blower and I got going real good one time and I almost made it all the way across the street and I found out that the cord wasn't long enough. It pulled the plug out of the wall and instantly dropped to the ground and threw me off.... LOL


Now on the full sized hovers we use a 18oz vinyl coated nylon for the skirt, it holds up really well, plus it is easy to glue up the corners and glue patches on.


bye

harrysin

I'm amazed that such a young man has developed so much specialised knowledge. You say that you now design you're own, does this include propeller design, the reason I ask is that a good friend of mine has designed a new type of airfoil that has FAR greater lift and only slightly more drag than conventional foils. It can be used as aircraft wings, turbine blades water pump impellers etc. Obviously I can't give away any clues to it's design, but mention it so that you know that it is possible to improve on standard designs.

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