Purging a bag skirt

[IBCrazy]

Does anyone know how to keep water from entering the hovercraft skirt. My craft uses a bag skirt which after a few seconds over the water fills with water and weighs it down. It is a bag style skirt.

I'm thinking about going with a finger style, but I've heard they scoop water too. Does anyone know how to avoid this?

-Alex

[hover dude]

Do you have a picture of your craft. I would need to see the underside of the craft to figure out the problem.

[HoverTim]

what sort of material are you using

[IBCrazy]

Unfortunately I have no pictures. I'm using a vinyl shower curtain as the skirt material. It is light, fairly durable, waterproof, and cheap.

The skirt picks up rocks too for some reason. I ran a battery through it the other day and dumped out nearly half a pound of pebbles!

Here's my guess: I made the vents for the plenum chamber point inward toward the middle of the craft rather than straight down. The forward motion is sweeping stuff right in, I think. I'm no hovercraft expert. This is my second craft and I really didn't do much research on it.

Does anyone have pictures of the bottom of their hovercraft I could look at?

Thanks,

-Alex

[HoverTim]

a bag skirt looks a bit like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/19759955@N07/2518185766/ what sort of skirt have you got ie bag, bag and finger, pure finger ?

[Trisquire]

I still don't understand the whole bag skirt concept. You've got an inflated cylindrical bag of fabric that runs around the lower perimeter of the hovercraft. Somewhere, you're going to need openings where the air gets forced into the bag. Presumably, you will also need output vents? Plus you've got the whole cavity which the bag surrounds. Do you force air in there as well?

I can't really visualize how it's all laid out though. Does someone have a diagram?

Tom