http://www.gizmag.com/mercier-jones-...ercraft/23542/

Looks cool. The control system is very interesting. I´m not sure about the forward high speed . . . .

Is that a Harley V-Twin engine in the pictures? I like the control system. Seems like that would be something we could mimic in a model.

No chance at all!

A lot of mistakes and wrong aproaches to hovercraft technology;

- inefective stability design, rear is smaller than the front, at high speed turn would be a disaster. Just see the proven American classic design; a triangle with the rear larger than the front.

- inefective thrust design; the splited thrust (one each side) needs two turbines to feed them and a lot of waisted (and heavy) mechanical parts or, a single turbine with a splited duct at the admission and another splited duct at the exit of the flow (a kind of a "H" with the fan at the centre), too much drag and flow restriction; needs a lot of waisted power and woul heat the ducts a lot.

- Skirt? difficult to see on the images, looks like skirtless (a lot of waisted lift power required) or a kind of sidewall design; only efective on water...


Good things:

- Steering design is original, good and efective.

Overall:
Sorry, no chance.

Carlos

It'll be interesting to see what they do with it!

They will do...
...Just Nothing!

It is just a Concept design.
Designers most of the times "design" things" they dont know, this is the case!

I did not referred the wrong lift design approach, all the other wrong approaches were enough to comment! In this design, lift would suffer from stall at over (mor or less, 70 MPH!).

By the way, Hovercrafy performance is NOT that low, back in 1995 the Wlorls speed record was around 137Km/hour, in Portugal! With all the Guiness parameters!

Of course we all know that speed is just one of the performance factors, and not recorded in Guiness, todays Hovercraft reach around 170 (?) Km/Hour...

So,
If someone thinks Hovercraft are not develloped, they do not follow Hovercraft Racing!


Regards,


Carlos Camoesas