The hovercraft is surprisingly dirty after just a few minutes flying around a "clear" parking lot.
 |
| Dirt collected under the thrust engine |
 |
| More collected on the side |
 |
| Another view of the dirt at the rear |
 |
| There's even dirt in the center of the fan. Clearly there's a lack of airflow there... |
After cleaning off as much dirt as possible I set to work to improve the hover performance.
I took two approaches. First I started by clearing out more of the grill wires. It made a large difference for the thrust fan. And since the lift fan is actually well protected, I cleared out 3 of 4 on the bottom, and 2 of 3 on the top except for the outer ring where I did 3 in a row where I expect the highest speed.
In addition there was a gap between my metal diverter plate and the board that is attached to the skirt attachment leaving about a 3/4" gap across the whole width. And with the wires removed I could now relatively stretch some Duct tape across the gap. I think this might be my first correct use of Duct tape ever!!
 |
| Sealing the diverter with duct tape front view |
 |
| Duct tape rear view |
 |
| And reassembled |
The propeller is much mor eexposed. i plan to build up a higher housing around the lift engine to keep me and other things farther away from the lift engine to avoid any problems with foreign object entries. I'm even thinking of a shroud/hood that will scoop forward air and also dampen the noise hopefully.
