Dino Jim - My UH-12R Hovercraft

My Hovercraft

The Skin

The weather is getting colder so work is proceeding at a snails pace now but here is the most recent updates.

The first part of skinning the craft is the sides shown here. Although I think I used too big of nails, oh well. Live and learn.

Ok, it has been sometime since I actually worked on the hovercraft. The weather was rather chilly and my garage does not have heat. So I took the winter off. But now that the weather is warm again it is time to restart on it. I cut out the bottom pieces last fall but I finally attached them in spring. I used rust resistant staples this time and boy did that save me a lot of hassle. The nails were starting to split the stringers when I put them in on the side. I also put in the runners that line the center middle but they have yet to be permanently attached. Next onto the bottom of the sides. I just need to purchase some epoxy first.

The middle runners have been epoxied in and attached to the bottom that I put in above. Next came putting the bottom skin on along the sides. Now that that has been done and smoothed out it is starting to look really good.

The final skin piece has been attached to the bottom front. First I put in some support pieces from rib 2 to the front since I was not sure I could bend the skin the way they wanted me to. Next the skin was attached and smoothed over. The next part is to fill in the holes and smooth it out, attached some exterior stringers for support and landing skids then I can finally flip it back over.

The bottom is finished for now. The bottom stringers are attached and the landing skids are on. Time to flip it and start from the top down.

View from the top after it was flipped over.

Lots of progress since last update. The inside has been painted with super expensive copper paint. The lift duct has been formed and attached. To form the lift duct the main circle was wrapped around 2 plywood discs (to be discarded eventually). I then suspended the disc by the wood strips shown. I built the rest of the duct around the suspended circle. The next step is to flip it back over, finish off the duct, paint and lacquer the bottom, the flip it over and fill it in. No big deal.

Well, moving from Buffalo to Salt Lake City caused a pretty big upheaval in the hovercraft building process. Here it is attached to the car and still all covered. Several problems developed from the move though. I needed to get some straps to keep it down and I tightened them too much at times so it ended up crushing parts of the skin added previously. Also I could only afford a 4' wide trailer instead of a 6' wide one. The 4' wide one was about $300 as opposed to over $1200. But to solve the problem with the trailer I had to cut holes out of the bottom to fit the wheels through. These now need to be replaced as well as the crushing fixed.

Well after over 2 years I finally got time to work on it again. I flipped it back over and with the help of my friend Brett we cleaned up the cut outs (I originally just quick cut them out with a jig saw since I was pressed for time). I have also fixed the crushing and advanced a little on the lift duct itself. At this point all I have to do is fill the holes and then I can finish off the bottom.

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The DinoJim logo is a Styracosaurus skull designed and created by me, based off of a fossil found at the American Museum of Natural History.

**The background image is an outline of a Shuvosaurus skull, which was created by me for my Master's Thesis.**

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