Adding drain holes

After testing the new skirts on land, in preparation for taking the vehicle out for testing on the water I worked with Victor to add some drain holes at the back to allow any water in the bag to be released.

We sketched out an area, cut some slits and then covered it with a flap of rubber with a rear facing opening to avoid snats.

The holes cut with markings for positioning the covering flaps.

The covering flap with vinyl cement applied.

The port pair of drain holes covered up

The starboard drain holes covered

The center drain holes covered.

The center drain holes needed some extra wax paper as the first application of vinyl cement had the cover with the glued side facing the wrong way, so it would scoop water instead of drain water. 8-)

Testing the New Skirts

With some help from Victor we were able to get out and test the new skirts in the driveway.

Here's coming out of the garage.



I took it for a quick spin down the driveway.




Then Victor took a try.

And finally we slid it back into the garage.

New skirts inflated

I successfully tested the new skirts today.

The corners aren't pretty but they hold air and I think they'll scuff the ground and likely wear down. But if I keep an eye on them, I suspect that they'll wear nicely to show where they need to be trimmed back and a few sequences of patches the skirt will evolve to be a more natural shape.

Front left corner

Backleft

Back right

Front right

Here's what it looks like. (Warning: lots of noise.)

Skirt corners glued

With some extra hands from Jenny I was able to get the remaining 3 corners glued shut. It's not super pretty, but I think it will hold air. And I'll plan to adjust it after inflation tests. I think it may even be worth trying to glue it while under pressure for then it will at least be holding shape, and with letting the glue get tacky before hand it sticks pretty well in one shot.

Port aft

Forward Port

Starboard Aft

More Skirts

With some help from Michael today I made good progress on the rest of the skirts.

We started cutting out out sections for the front and rear of the vehicle. They're slightly deeper so go across the half way point so we couldn't put them side by side.

Practice skirt over new material for front and back.

Attaching the skirts makes it look a lot more like a real hovercraft.

Outer edges of skirts attached

We moved on to attaching the inner edge of the skirt in the front.

Inside of first skirt attached.

Punching the holes on the underside is a pain. So we switched the order and lined up and punched the holes first on top, before moving to the underside.

All the holes punched and validated

While working on it the screws would pop off easily as we were working on it so I switched to using zip ties for guidance.

Using zip ties for guidance.

Cable ties down the port side skirt.

The small spacing between the batton straps and the rub rails made the prepunching even more important since visibility is limited. And being under-hung it's hard to hold everything in place simultaneously.

There's also important aspects to how to overlap the skirt parts. By switching the overlap we were able to make it so it will slide better over the ground without getting hooked.

After with lip facing backwards 

Before with lip facing forward

We trimmed some of the corners off to make the joint more rounded, but it's definitely going to be pretty ugly at the corners. But hopefully it will float high enough so that it will not matter too much. I know it's not going to deal with plow in well anyway. We glued it in a moderately curved manner. The heavier skirt material is harder to bend and secure in the billowed shape.

Here's the first results. It looks like it will hold the air. We'll have to see how it looks once it's inflated.

First corner glued

Later in the afternoon I had a little bit more time so I attached the aft and port skirt inside edges. And now it's starting to take shape. Just some more gluing to do.

Looking underneath with the skirts mostly attached.

New skirts started

Today with the great help from Victor I've started recreating the hovercraft skirts using the vinyl material that came with the skirt replacing the cheap plastic practice ones.

There was a little bit of sanding left over but the bottom of the craft looks good. And it's good to see the craft back flat in the garage.

Back horizontal, but on blocks for work

Laying out the old skirts on top of the new material we've cut oversided elements. After attaching them we'll cut them down. The skirt material cuts in half nicely to form the size of the skirt for each side.

Side skirt laid on top of the new uncut materaial

The new skirt material compared to the test skirt templates.

The attachment battons worked out well. Though we had to find a way to make holes in the right places. But it turns out there's a good tool in inventory for that, a hole punch ;-)

The very specialized tooling.

And even better the standoff distance needed from the edge was approximately the same as the depth of the hole punch so you just had to line up the lateral alignment.

The first side took alittle while to put on, and we put the batten on the wrong side up at first. But the 2nd one went quickly. And we stretched it out the full length first, then slide it up to punch the holds and put in the intermediate holes for the batten screws.

First side attached.

And we briefly tested the vinyl cement that looks like it will be fine to just cement the joints without stitching. And it nicely sets in a few minutes so gluing the corners shouldn't be too much of a challenge.

Here's the final view with skirt material dangling from both sides.