I really need a hovercraft.

Here's what ya need Mike:

DiamondbackAlaska.jpg


http://www.diamondbackairboats.com/airboats/alaskan.htm

A DiamondBack Alaskan Airboat, straight from the factory in Cocoa Florida.

And I can vouch for the quality..."Hitchcraft One" is a pure Diamondback 13 x 8 - 8 years old now, over 350 hours on'er. I'm gettin'r re-upholstered and she'll be all ready to go for duck season. My Christmas fund is for gas :-)

Hitch
 
I have been wanting an air boat for traveling over the lake when it freezes over. They are hard to come by here in Idaho.
 
A friend of mine built his own little airboat one winter and yoinked the motor and prop out of another guy's ultralite. We used it on the Pelly River in the spring when it wasn't even totally open yet. What a hoot! It was really hard on fuel though.

If I bought that Diamondback Alaskan would you deliver it to me Hitch? THAT would be some road trip eh!

Mike
 
That looks like a Sev. Wouldn't be too surprised to see Barry Palmer log onto this board to promote his product. You don't want a hovercraft. I built one once, an 18 ft UH-17T. It worked, hauled butt with a 70 hp Subaru engine I yanked out of an old car. The problem with hovercrafts is number 1 they are absolutely uninsurable at least in the USA for liability or anything else, secondly they have to be built so lightly in order to be able to carry any significant payload that they are fragile and require frequent repairs (my 18 ft craft was covered with 1/8 inch plywood, with no fibreglass except at the seams), they are just very complex machines, having to have not only a drive system for thrust but also one for lift, whether or not they have separate engines for each system, or a complex transmission that allows one engine to do both, fourthly if the craft is homebuilt the trasmission system is also homebuilt, and the engine has been adapted to use in the hovercraft and isn't desinged for it, as opposed to a boat with an outboard that has been made for use on a boat, so if you have problems with the outboard you take it to the shop, and when no if you have problems with the hovercraft engine or transmission you fix it. Lastly, large hovercraft (like one that would hold 3 people) are extremely expensive if they are commercially manufactured, and if homebuilt take probably 1000 hrs to build. I once queried a group of hovercraft owners online about what they thought was the ratio of hours spent repairing their hovercrafts to flying hours, and the answer was 10 to 1. My experience was more like 100 to 1; eventually I gave up and destroyed my creation. An airboat, gas guzzling as it would be, is a much more practical alternative.

Ed.
 
A friend of mine built his own little airboat one winter and yoinked the motor and prop out of another guy's ultralite. We used it on the Pelly River in the spring when it wasn't even totally open yet. What a hoot! It was really hard on fuel though.



Mike
Click to expand...

What did he use for a hull? It sound just like the kind of hillbilly rig that I need. I only need to travel about a mile each way so fuel isn't a huge factor.
 
We built a plywood and fiberglass hull from plywood I scrounged from the dump. It went faster on snow than it did on water.

Mike
 
How did it hold up? Glen-L sells plans for a VW powered airboat built with fiberglass over wood. I just don't think it will last with heavy ice use. I could get the sheets of poly to shield it however.
 
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