Hover Craft Lifts Entire Cub Scout Den (not exactly RC)

[RC Dad]

My son built a hover craft for his science fair project. He tested the impact skirt size would have on payload lifting capacity. Here it is lifting his brother's entire cub scout den.

Here is a picture of the max weight it lifted:



And here it is in action (turn sound down):

Not too bad for plywood, plastic and duct tape. We want to put a few high thrust motors on this and use thrust vectoring to steer it. Definitely gonna have to shroud the props...

 

[colorex]

Awesome project! You gonna use some turnigy motors? Or something else?

 

[RC Dad]

Probably look at Turnigy first. Have to see if we can use a deep cycle 12 Volt as power source too...

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Any thoughts on redesigning the platform to accommodate the driver and propulsion system?

I wonder if a single motor, with directional fans (like on airboats) would do better than the twin motors.

How much force does it take to move the platform?

 

[colorex]

How much force does it take to move the platform?

Depends only on its mass.

 

[pgerts]

How much force does it take to move the platform?

The Hovering makes it almost out of any friction.
The fun with a hovercraft is that it is totally unstable in all directions ;-)
You just give it a push and it will float away.

 

[RC Dad]

Any thoughts on redesigning the platform to accommodate the driver and propulsion system?

I wonder if a single motor, with directional fans (like on airboats) would do better than the twin motors.

How much force does it take to move the platform?

Yeah we have thought about that approach too. It does not take too much to get it to move. The real problem is keeping it under control. Stopping is the real issue. With a constant, non-adjustable lifting force (leaf blower) stopping will be difficult.

We have actually considered using four separate motors to help control direction and provide somewhat of a stopping capability. The logic for controlling four separate motors is probably beyond our scope. However, one of those boards for a quadcopter might work. I think something like that may work for forward and directional control, but stopping would still be an issue. However, I have not really looked at those boards and so have no practical understanding of how they work and what all they could do in this application.

This thing will probably just be an ongoing experiment. As we think up crazy things to try, we'll rig it up and give it a go. No real goal or target capability for it at this point. We are also kicking around ideas on how to make it sea worthy so we can take it up to our lake cabin and play with it...