I'd like to share with you, my hovercraft.

[Psychron]

Here she is.. She's revision 2.2. I think this will be the last version too.. the pool noodles for the base are holding up like champs.

 

[Certified Mike]

Hey cool!

 

[EvhCo]

That's simply awesome! What kind of motor is used to spin the blade? I reckon it's a brushless one either way.

 

[Psychron]

Thank you for the compliment. It has dual motors in it as you may have seen in the video. Both were from older F power packs from flitetest so they're brushless emax 2204 2300KV motors and they came with 12 amp brushless esc's which were never quite up to the task of driving those motors with a 6040 on them like is installed in that foam insulated box bridge. Each motor generates about 450 grams of thrust. One to provide the "lift" and the other to provide forward thrust. It's running off a 5100 10C battery. After the motors started stuttering on me I started doing longer runs and testing for heat and of course, the motors were fine, but the esc's were getting so hot they were releasing the hot glue bond between them and the paper surface on the top. I hastily sourced out four 30 amp esc's that were very small and appear to be all digital. Either way, the 30 amp replacements are working great and they don't even get warm. I have a feeling I'll wear out the bearings on the motors before I lose those esc's now.

 

[EvhCo]

Very interesting. I've only worked with brushed motors throughout my life until entering the wonderful world of nitro, but I doubt brushless motors wear out that fast either. Can it hover even higher above the ground? I'm sure it'd take off on you if you had that motor go faster, though, hehe.

Sorry if any of the questions I asked so far were covered in your video. I've lost my buds and I can't listen to anything.

 

[Psychron]

Very interesting. I've only worked with brushed motors throughout my life until entering the wonderful world of nitro, but I doubt brushless motors wear out that fast either. Can it hover even higher above the ground? I'm sure it'd take off on you if you had that motor go faster, though, hehe.

Sorry if any of the questions I asked so far were covered in your video. I've lost my buds and I can't listen to anything.

No apologies necessary. I totally understand. And I'm almost positive this could be done with a couple nitro engines or 10 cc gas motors with a couple extra servos.

It can hover higher off the ground actually. When I was running up and down the street I have the lift motor running around 70% throttle, and when I take to the grass, though I don't need to, I like to bump it up to the second position on the switch that puts me at 100% throttle. I get about 10 minutes of fun out of it, and it's funny you should mention taking off. I've been considering putting a couple wings on it just to see if I can achieve actual flight with it at the club field. I'd need an elevator surface and ailerons of course. The tricky part is building wing out of the same material that's large enough to lift that thing off the ground at 15 mph. (top speed so far). to be fair, I didn't expect much more than that since it's shaped like a brick. and then the wing would have to fit over the down draft column or be mounted permanently to the deck.. it'd be a challenge but one I hope to attempt sometime... I'd love to show off at the club with that thing and then to have it take off and fly around, and only have to re-engage the lift motor when I'm getting ready to land. The tricky part with the wing is that downdraft column since it's the cog for the machine.

but yes.. short answer is a larger motor and prop combo that provides closer to 1200 grams of thrust would likely lift the whole thing off the ground.

 

[Rolex]

Very cool. Have you thought about running it on water?

 

[Certified Mike]

Since my knowledge of hovercraft is so limited... How difficult is it to get/make a skirt for underneath it and maybe to cut the noodles back some? So it looks and more importantly, would drive like a 1:1 hover...

 

[Psychron]

I have, and did

Here's the playlist for this thing so you can see the evolution of it from humble beginnings.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLgu2JAVthjJzFXXH716gJ3C3b9qr5K4K

 

[Psychron]

Since my knowledge of hovercraft is so limited... How difficult is it to get/make a skirt for underneath it and maybe to cut the noodles back some? So it looks and more importantly, would drive like a 1:1 hover...

It's not hard to make the skirt if you really want one. I just couldn't find material that lasted more than a couple runs up and down the street without coming back looking like swiss cheese. I posted a link to the playlist that shows the evolution to this current configuration. The pool noodles will probably last a good long time because they give and don't tear like the bags. If you see the first design in the very first video I had a styrofoam ring inside and a shower curtain wrapped around and there was some intricate folding and cursing and taping, and cursing , and taping again, and that took bumps in the road really well, lifted up higher, etc, but like I said, I couldn't find anything that would hold up to wear and tear while also being capable of riding across the grass and water as well. This pool noodle design is the best I've been able to come up with so far. it does pop about an inch off the ground when I hit the inflation switch.Despite your best efforts, the skirt on the hovercraft will always be rubbing at some point against something, that and all my research on skirts resulted in a skirt that if not properly taped down to a deflector plate would balloon out and then the thing rides on an angle down the street, never quite achieving a true level hover.

It's been a journey my friend. I'm happy with what I've got now and when I took the skirt off, it actually ran better on the water than without. I about crapped myself and said ok.. the noodle IS the skirt from now on.

But I didn't answer your question.. so to make the skirt (my method) you lay your shower curtain out on the floor, put the hovercraft on top of it, and cut a wide swath all the way around that will wrap up around the whole thing and still inflate. Then the tricky part with the deflector plate comes into play.. using regular cello packing tape. The bad thing was, the more holes that would tear into the thing the worse it rode, because of all the leaks. and then more tape and more tape and eventually it's all tape.. made of aluminum for ductwork.

 

[Rolex]

I gave a lot of thought to a hovercraft in my early days of Tamiya electric RCs, and my thought was to cut the rubber skirt from a car tire inner tube since it would take a lot of abuse, would be flexible enough to lay down when the motors were off, and would not flap out when under pressure. The next thoughts would be a bike tire tube which would be inflated before hand with some sort of plastic skid on the bottom.
As far as water use, I think balancing the craft would be pretty critical.

 

[hamz9561]

I was also thinking of using a bicycle inner-tube inflated in the same manner as a real skirt with holes in the bottom at regular intervals to dump excess air at the bottom to act as an air bearing.

 

[Psychron]

I gave a lot of thought to a hovercraft in my early days of Tamiya electric RCs, and my thought was to cut the rubber skirt from a car tire inner tube since it would take a lot of abuse, would be flexible enough to lay down when the motors were off, and would not flap out when under pressure. The next thoughts would be a bike tire tube which would be inflated before hand with some sort of plastic skid on the bottom.
As far as water use, I think balancing the craft would be pretty critical.

That sounds like a fine idea. I decided against it because the pool noodle is so durable it'll probably never wear out and on the water, when it was just a styrofoam cooler spacer, it ran like a champion out there. I was very impressed. The shower curtain just slowed me down.. especially due to the scoop on the bottom in the back where I was bleeding out air.

 

[hamz9561]

That sounds like a fine idea. I decided against it because the pool noodle is so durable it'll probably never wear out and on the water, when it was just a styrofoam cooler spacer, it ran like a champion out there. I was very impressed. The shower curtain just slowed me down.. especially due to the scoop on the bottom in the back where I was bleeding out air.

I did find patterns for making segmented skirts online a while back when I first started thinking about building an RC hovercraft. Google had multiple entries.

 

[Psychron]

I agree. I saw much of the same as you. Segmented skirts looked interesting but were not something I wanted to get into. Besides, the nature of the skirt is to skip, drag, and abrade across the ground to adapt to terrain changes. All of the segmented skirt designs required sewing and I was looking for a quick and dirty solution to get the job done and provide me a hovercraft that performed well and didn't require constant skirt maintenance. I think I've achieved that with the pool noodle which requires no effort to inflate and doesn't take away from the thrust of the "inflator" motor, so I'm very satisfied with my toy and glad all I have to do is change out the battery for a while. I'm sure the noodles will eventually wear out but for the moment I'm happy with the performance for what it is.

Now, if you or anyone else would like to make an inflatable skirt, I encourage it. I hope your search for a more durable bag works out better than mine. And I'd love to see your results, longevity tests, etc. Once I found how much better my craft hovered and performed without the bag or deflector plate, I was sold on the bagless design.