My friends and I are trying to construct a hovercraft. Has anyone ever tried this? Does anyone have any advice?
There’s this guy Tytus Gerrish that has made a lot of them. I found it by searching. 
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29598&highlight=hovercraft
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21600&highlight=hovercraft
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21236&highlight=hovercraft
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21154&highlight=hovercraft
thanks, thats pretty cool. We are actually trying to make a life size one though.
I looked into building a hovercraft a few years ago. The idea didn’t go anywhere, but from my research I can tell you gas-powered leaf-blowers are by far the easiest way to go in terms of lifting power, unless you’re planning on making your own fan blades and hooking them up to a car engine or something similar.
You won’t get very far if you use an electrically-powered lift fan, unless you plan on hauling a few hundred pounds of battery around (or unless you have a really long extension cable ;)).
Oh, and if you’re really in a hurry, an upside-down life raft can make an acceptable skirt.
Good luck in your efforts!
I built a full sized one while in high school. I competed in the ISEF in 1983. I can tell you want you want to know.
I am involved in the Vacation Bible School at my church this year. This year’s theme is Star Wars. The church is making many props and objects for the VBS that have the Star Wars theme. I am actually helping constuct two hovercrafts for this VBS. One will hold two people and be for show and the other with hold about 10 children so we can cart them around the camp. We will make them to look like Star Wars pod racers.
A good website that we use is Universal Hovercraft. This comapny makes and sells many different sizes and shapes of hovercrafts. You can buy plans for hovercrafts, or buy ones that are already made. It is a very useful website.
I hope this helps. If you have more questions, let me know.
tytus has soo many versions going lol…small but cool… some people i know wanted to do a human version too…was going to be summer project…
good luck w/ your hovercraft!
I,m on the local dive rescue team and we have one for use as a swiftwater rescue vehicle. But anyway you can see ones similar to ours on the AIR COMMANDER website. http://www.aircommander.com There are some good photos of the operating systems to use as references. I think there might even be some schematics. there are also some vids that show hovercraft races .
P.S. let me know how it turns out, and good luck 
they aren’t teribly difficult all you need is a flat thing duct tape another flat thing somthing that blows air and a glad bag. i Will elobrate on the mechanics with a drawing later. i have stuff to do today and arefin staying over tonite.
Im one of the hovercraft builders (along with edomus) and maybe you can help us predict what exactly is going to happen when we throw this thing together… Basically, we are using a bag skirt. We have an 11HP engine that is direct-drive to a 6-blade fan with a diameter of 24" (a little bigger, really). This is a very home made craft, so it is all built on top of an 8’x4’x3/4" plywood sheet. Do you think it will hover the way it is supposed to? I think the hover height will be about 8 inches.
arp
I’m thinking that might work, just make sure your fan has the highest RPM you can give it. Watch your weight, that brings the end to a lot of homemade hovercrafts. Also what are your plans for steering the Hovercraft?
Wow, 11 hp. That is really big. I assume that is your propulsion engine? Do you have another engine for lift? Or are you going to somehow duct this one to give lift and propulsion?
i was going to try this
Actually, the 11 HP is for lift. We have an 8HP engine for propulsion. I know, this is sort of backwards, but the 11HP has a vertical axle and the 8 has a horizonta axle, so we decided that rather than use differentials and belts we would do it this way. Off to work…
arp
Edomus,
I recently built a 2-person hovercraft (Universal Hovercraft 12T4) from plans and can hopefully answer some of your questions. First, your 4’x8’ platform should be able to lift one person as long as you can generate sufficient pressure from your lift fan (you don’t mention what your fan blade was made out of or any of it’s characteristics). Universal Hovercraft (UH) sells plans for a 3’x5’ beginner hovercraft (UH-6F) that utilizes a 3 to 5 hp engine for both lift and thrust that can handle a 150 lb. payload so your engines are certainly large enough. You may want to think about buying these plans as they will have good general information on building a basic craft (skirt construction, operation, steering, etc.) that you can use when building yours. Larger engines are not necessarily a plus and can in some cases add weight for no useful purpose if your lift & thrust systems aren’t designed to utilize the engine’s capabilities. However, having existing engines available does negate a lot of the downsides.
One thing I would like to stress is to make sure you place guards around both your props. These blades will be going around 3000 RPM and could cause serious injury should they break or have some other failure. I say this from experience. After about 40 minutes of run time on the 12T4, I had a failure of the thrust system that resulted in a broken crankshaft on a 10 hp engine, and a prop split into two pieces. One of these pieces was thrown about 50’ right through some lightweight steel mesh (luckily, no one was in the path.). Needless to say, there will be some changes when it’s repaired. You may want to think about making a real duct for the lift & thrust props as not only will you will get better performance, but it can also serve as guarding. You should wire in something like a lanyard kill switch to stop the engines in an emergency. Being homemade, safety should be a priority.
A few other thoughts based on your drawing and previous notes… 1) you may want to lower the hover height to about 6”, as with only a 4-foot width, it might be more stable. 2) I’m not sure if you really want a raised seat, as that will make your CG higher, again affecting stability. 3) I don’t see any method to steer the craft. Typically 2 or 3 rudders are placed behind the thrust prop to direct the airflow and steer the craft.
Finally, make sure the props are designed to handle the stresses of running at the speed of the engines (possibly up to 3600 RPM). The props must also be well balanced. An unbalanced prop will cause significant forces and excessive vibration on the engine and craft as well as the prop itself.
Hope some of these comments help, and if you have any more questions, please ask and I will try to answer them. Just remember that the above comments are opinions only. My background is certainly not in hovercraft or prop design!
Mike
11hp is good for about one person. Take the total weigt and divide by surface area. That will give you the static pressure you need to acheive exualibrium. let say you are 100lbs, and you have 1m square that makes 100lbs per square meter , or .1lbs per square cm of pressure you need to be able to generate to achieve “zero weight”. If you can somehow build an enclose to test the static pressure of your powerplant then you can predict how much weight you can lift.
Hover hieght is dependent on your skirt height and the statci pressure you can maintain. It is an illusion though. Even though you look like you are barely leaving the ground the skirt is flexible and can flex to clear obstacles. The is the lift cushion hieght that is critical, because that is what will get hung up when you try to clear obstacles.
I had a 650 cc snowmobile engine in the hovercraft I built and I could lift 600lbs with a 6 inch hoverheight and I could travel at about 15 to 20 mph. I had one three blade prop that provided both lift and thrust. About one third of the air volume was used for lift, and two thirds for thrust. I will dig up some pics and send them to you!! Hope that helps.
Hey there, i figured i should post on here. I am the third hovercraft group member, and the resident computer animation student/self taught maya n00b who has supplying the renders. I was the other constructor of the RC Chevy Nova along with arp ive whipped up another one with a few changes to further illustrate our physical and conceptual progress… i know there is no steering yet, but it will come as soon as we get a concrete idea of how it will work. i zoomed in on the drive engine, being the only update section of the render. ive labeled a few new components.
http://members.cox.net/tommyo55/HC%20progress%206%20edit.jpg
My brother built a hovercraft from scratch a few years ago when he was in college. It consisted of 4’ x 6’ plywood sheet, heavy duty plastic trash bag type material, some PVC for distributing the air through the skirt evenly, two frisbees bolted to the bottom to hold the skirt up in the middle, and two electric leaf blowers for lift. It didn’t have any sort of propulsion or steering, but it was downright impressive for lift. We tested it by loading it up with cinder blocks, reaching over 1200 lbs before we ran out of cinder blocks and began having trouble with the duct tape and staples giving way that were holding the skirt to the plywood.
I actually have what is left of it in my garage and have meant to improve upon it since then, but I’ve yet to have the chance. It is definitely in my list of things to do over the summer. I’ll be sure to upload some pics if I ever get it running again
If you have any questions I may not be the best resource, but I’ll help with what I can.