Components to a Hovercraft

Hello.

 What is a hovercraft and how do you make one? A hovercraft is a platform vehicle that glides with air cushion. Simply put, instead of wheels, the principles of physics and fluid mechanics are used. Not as simple as it sounds? But really it is simple. In building a hovercraft, you don't have to worry about the applied science that it adheres into. You just need to know the When you get all three parts made, it's time to put them together. But first, it is important to know why these parts are important.

1. Hoverboard/Platform
2. Skirt to cause air cushion
3. Air Vents

 When you get all three parts made, it's time to put them together. But first, it is important to know why these parts are important. The hoverboard (seating platform) is where you will sit on. This is the vehicle. For the board to fly and glide, its surface area facing the ground should bear enough air cushion to support it. Building a hovercraft requires you to allow that pressurized air to reside underneath that platform. To do that, you should bore strategic holes in it to cause a thick air film to build below. Because air molecules are more spacious and loose compared to liquid molecules, they disperse faster. To create the cushion of air, it should be controlled below the hoverboard. This means there should be a means to trap the air temporarily to build enough pressure to lift a weight up. This air trap design is called a skirt. This is the most important element in building a hovercraft. It delays the release of air thus creating a lift. The third part is the air vent. These are simply holes on the platform. This should allow air to pass through. Part of building a hovercraft is the installation of fans. A fan builds a gush of concentrated air. The put that air power to productive use, you need to place them in the best strategic place where the vents are. The vents will lead the air underneath the platform surface thus building cushion.

Goodbye.

Hovercraft Racing

Howdy!

Hovercrafts, designed to operate on both land and water and be masters of neither, are odd little beasts. They've got odd performance characteristics and ponderous handling. So that means when you race 'em, things get pretty crazy. Believe it or not, hovercraft racing has been around for quite some time, and around the globe with this year's World Hovercraft Championships hosted in the UK. The popularity of the sport waxes and wanes, but its nature always stays the same: hover crafts racing around a track just like an auto race, except in these races part of the track is water and part is grass. Like auto racing, there are various classes to enter. Also like auto racing, there are crashes as well, though they tend to happen at lower speed. Because the races take place both on water and on dry land the racers are required to wear both fire retardant racing suits and life jackets in case they should crash on water. All of that's great stuff, but really, the point is to watch a pack of hovercrafts sounding like a swarm of angry bees tail out around a corner.  Some hovercraft racing: Click Me?

Peace!

Hovercrafts in movies

Hello.

Hovercraft Definition: A vehicle that travels just over water or land on a air cushion provided with a downward thrust.

 This is the Feb 26 blog. I'm going to be identifying in what movies a hovercraft is classified as a "hovercraft". First is Avengers, second it's Star Wars IV and finally some James Bond movies. 

So... The Avengers helicarrier from the movies, the question is.....is it a hovercraft? According to the definition stated above it's around 50% yes and 50% no. It indeed does travel over water and land with it being provided by a downward thrust. Except it is wayyy of the ground and there is no air cushion on the helicarrier. So technically it is indeed a hovercraft.

The Landspeeder is a vehicle Luke uses in Star Wars IV. Once again this is also part hovercraft and not. It is close to the ground and it goes on land and possibly water (we don't know). It is never shown in the movies that it can go on water but it definitely can go on land. It is also not a hovercraft because, once again there is no air cushion on the bottom but this time it has no downward thrust. Instead it just hovers in the air. Once again we have a classification of a part hovercraft and part not hovercraft in a movie.

Our final movie(s) are from the legendary spy, James Bond. A hovercraft appears in 2 movies, Moonraker and Die Another Day. First is Die Another Day. The hovercraft in the movie there is a real military grade hovercraft. Just above the water, downward thrust, and has the air cushion. This hovercraft is Nolan Approved! The hovercraft is meeting all of my standards! The second one is Moonraker, and Moonraker is the first JB movie my dad saw. Moonraker is a great movie and has an interesting hovercraft. For the first part of the movie there is a gondola chase race. But later on, James transforms the gondola into a makeshift hovercraft by flipping a switch to get away. The hovercraft is not legit, but it works. It's just like the other one, a full 100%!

After realizing that hovercraft are used by people who are spy's, superheroes and people on different planets, it is fair to say that all of them have and use a hovercraft...or something like it. That's all for this post, see ya!

Jan 29 Blog.

 (This is done on my iPad so there are no special things)

                                                                        Hello.

 This is my second blog for this month as we are now in the present of Hovercrafts. A new brand of hovercraft is the Mercier-Jones "Supercraft". This baby is known as the Bugatti Veyron of Hovercrafts. It is a hefty price of $$75,000 so you better be saving up money for it. It goes 80mph (128kph) which is really fast for a water and land vehicle. The company was founded in 2013 and is selling today. An image is posted below of this blog to see how fricken sweet this looks. I have researched a website of a man and his diaries of when he was on a hovercraft. The page also has a little place where he tells you tips on building Hovercrafts. A hovercraft would break and come to a stop. There is a part where it talks about electromagnets and if the hovercraft had circuits and those would store energy generated by the speed of the hovercraft. If you wanted to brake you would have to close the circuit using a switch and stop the electrics flow into the fans blowing you forward and slowly bring you to a stop. An easier way would be to drop an anchor and stop immediatley. Although you could hit someone with the anchor and it would be a hassle to put it back into the hovercraft, not to mention that anchors are obsurdly heavy and would make it so your hovercraft would go reeeeealy slow.

 This has been my 5th blog for genius hour.

                                                                        Goodbye.

Supercraft  Pic.

What The Hovercraft Came To Be

Hello.

 This is my 4th blog for the genius hour project and this blog is about what the hovercraft ended up coming to be in this part of the timeline. (1960's). The hovercraft was used as a high-speed water/land transport leading to the utilization of: military vehicles, search and rescue and other commercial uses for the hovercraft. More people and other companies were researching new ways to design different models of hovercraft's such as Westland, William Denny, Vickers-Armstrong, and Folland. Later in 1965 a discovery about hovercrafts is that a function of the roughness of the surface it traveled over. If there was a flat surface (pavement, wooden flooring etc.) the amount of air pressure needed was so low that a piece of paper couldn't limbo under it, aaand that the hovercrafts ended up being able to compete in energy terms with conventional systems like steel wheels etc. Hoveverino, resulting in that led to terms and people who thought of "Hovertrains" though the concept was never continued. Even if it was going to be continued, it would be waaaaaaaaay too complex even for Albert Einstien and Steven Hawking combined.  

Goodbye.

3rd Blog.

Hello.

 This is my 3rd blog for my genius hour on hovercrafts. This blog will be on the history of hovercrafts in the Late 1950's-1960's. After the prototype of the SR.N1, in 1958 Christopher Cockerell and Saunders Roe made more hovercrafts. They made the SR.N1 Mk II, Mk III and Mk IV. The SR.N1 designs worked except they couldn't be classified as "Hovercrafts" as they were too close to the water when they were used. The solution was easily solved with the help of Cecil Latimer-Needham, following a suggestion made by his business partner Arthur Ord-Hume in 1958. He suggested to put two rings of rubber to produce a double-walled extension of the vents in the lower fuselage. Doing this resulted is the hovercraft achieving extra space above the water. Latimer and Christopher devised a 4 foot skirt for the SR.N1 Mk V This resulted in the hovercraft to be able to hop over waves and other possible objects easier. A few years later in 1961 Latimer sold his skirt ideas to Westland, a British aircraft manufacturer.

Goodbye.

1st Vlog.

Hello.

This video is my vlog for genius hour, it was recorded on my iPad so the quality is pretty meh, anyways this it the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyTnJmlyThM  . All my school videos will be posted on the "unlisted: setting. All my other videos will be posted on "public".

Goodbye.