Hovercraft

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 23:59:59 -800

Woodley and Steven got the idea that it would be a fun idea to build a simple
hovercraft over the holidays. So, two days after Christmas, we met at Steven's
house, bought three rectangular pieces of 1.5-ply plywood, a big sheet of 6-mil
plastic sheeting, some duct tape and a lot of staples. Some time later, we had
connected the three pieces like so: |= , rounded off the front piece, and cut
a hole in the front. We then huffed goop fumes for quite a while as we sought
to bond the plastic to the plywood with goop, staples, and duct tape. The next
day we spent stapling various parts of the underside together to create a mostly
level set of air pontoons around the outer edge of the craft, cut a plethora of
vent holes in the bottom, connected the blower from a shop vac, and tried it out
with the results that one can see above. Note: Actual construction was tricker
than this. We checked that everything was secure, put Woodley atop the
hovercraft, and he went for the test flight as Steven slowly pushed him down
the driveway into the street. Steven reported that he wasn't pushing very hard
yet the whole craft was moving quite easily down the slope. Update: If the OGG
movie doesn't open, you might want to try out VLC.