Hello and welcome to my humble bit of cyberspace. This blog will (hopefully) chronicle the design and construction of my second hovercraft. I'll post some links in the sidebar that will explain what a hovercraft is, how it works, and the log for my first craft.
Currently I am in the design phase - the idea is still very young but so far appears doable. The goals for this craft are to simply get something put together as quickly and cheaply as possible. The current design is 11 feet long, 3 feet wide at the bow, and 6 feet wide at the stern. The hull will be constructed out of extruded polystyrene foam; a.k.a. blue/pink/yellow foam; the base will be 3 inches thick and the walls and other panels will be 1 inch foam of the same type. The hull will get 2 layers of 10 oz. glass on the top with the underside left bare except wood for mounting the landing feet. While this means the hull is not a true composite, all Universal Hovercraft designs are spec'd out this way and there are no systemic structural issues that I know of.
To save cost, I will re-use the powerplants from my previous craft: 6 hp vertical shaft lift engine driving a 24" 4 bladed fan, and a 12.5 hp horizontal shaft thrust engine spinning (initially) a 36-18 prop via a belt drive with a 1:1 pulley ratio. I broke 2 crankshafts with the prop directly mounted to the engine, so I'm not going that route again!
I have already done a rough design of the thrust engine reduction stand (originally I intended to modify my first craft, but it didn't live long enough...), so there is relatively little design work to be done.
I am shooting to assemble the hull in 2 weeks while working a full time job this summer. Depending on what job I end up with, this may or may not be feasible. Rough first cut estimations put the total cost at about $600.
No comments:
Post a Comment