My Hovercraft:
Part 3
The Top Skin
When the pandemic hit I had some time to be able to work on my own projects. One of those projects was my hovercraft, which has been in the works since 2005. Here are the updates for last year through this year. Almost all of the updates are from last year, since we moved across country this year and I haven't found any time to work on it.
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July 18th, 2020: Back to work after a several years break. Here I returned to adding the skirt tack strip along the outer edge of the hull. The tack strip is used to attach the upper edge of the skirt, which is what helps a hovercraft hover.
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August 11th, 2020: Finished the skirt attach strips. Getting ready to move on to skinning the top. The strips needed to be added before the top was skinned since access to the inside of the wall would be limited once skinned.
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August 14th, 2020: Before I can skin the sides, the front section needs to be filled in with sturdy foam. These blocks are custom cut and then inserted one at a time. Eventually they will be sanded smooth. Starting at the center of the craft and working outwards.
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August 16th, 2020: Continuing outwards. Using spray foam to fill in gaps turned out to not work so well since the spray foam wasn't anywhere near as dense as the pink foam. But after some trimming and sanding it made do.
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August 23rd, 2020: Finished the foam infill on the front. The pink foam is only used to fill in between the ribs in front of the duct, which is what I have here. I can now start skinning the sides.
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September 2nd, 2020: Left and right wing skins are attached.
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September 30th, 2020: Now the interior wing skins are attached. Once the pieces are cut, which does take some fine tuning since they are flexed around, the attachment itself is fairly straightforward. Unfortunately there was a supply chain issue getting the epoxy I needed so I lost all of September to work and epoxy doesn't set in the cold.
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October 30th, 2020: Both skins on the other wing attached and the foam front has been partially sanded down.
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November 4th, 2020: Following the wing skins, the foam was sanded down with any imperfections filled in by epoxy since the spray foam didn't work too well. Then the skin between the duct and the cockpit was installed. Lots of clamps to make sure it stayed in place while flexing it around.
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November 16th, 2020: After the central skin I was able to do the last thing for the season and that was to install the lift fan brackets. This involved cutting into the lift duct and the skin I just put on to drop them into place. Hopefully I measure them out accurately but it seems like they should be solid. I then epoxied them into place. I also then fiberglassed over the pink foam, so although it appears to be just foam, it is actually protected.
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March 17th, 2021: Unfortunately, after all that work we decided to move back to New York, so the hovercraft needed to make another cross country trip. This involved purchasing another trailer that better fit it and strapping it down.
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March 19th, 2021: Once the hovercraft was fully strapped down and covered with tarps, it was set to go.
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April 8th, 2021: All packed up and ready to go on a cross country trip.
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November 16th, 2021: And all comfy in her new home. She now has her own wood shop that she can sit in and contemplate life.
