I’ve got some really cool stuff for you guys, you’re not going to believe how much stuff is out there on how to make your own hovercraft–who would
| have thought doing this was such a popular hobby?? Ok, well what I’m going to show you is how to build a hovercraft you can actually ride on in an afternoon with VERY little material, how to build a little toy one in about 5 minutes with a CD and a balloon, how to make a bit |
more complicated hovercraft and play “Shoverboard” with it (shuffle board with hovercrafts), AND I’ve got the full Mythbusters episode for you to watch where Jaime and Adam compete in teams with each other over who can build the best hovercraft! Win!!
A bit of background information about hovercrafts
A hovercraft (aka “ACV”, or Air Cushion Vehicle) is a vehicle capable of moving over almost any type of surface on earth by being supported by a slow-moving cushion of high-pressure air that’s pressed against the underlying terrain while being contained within a skirt, usually made of rubber or some type of flexible plastic.
Hovercraft are used world-wide to transport all sorts of things from single passengers in small sporting hovercrafts all the
| way up to huge hovercraft transporting hundreds of passengers and thousands of tons of cargo. They’re even used by the military as transport and beach assault craft due to their unique ability to travel equally well over almost any terrain: land, sea, snow and ice, etc. The hovercraft you |
see in the upper left there at the top is the one currently in use by the U.S. Marine Corps to conduct beach assaults, and has in fact been used just recently during combat operations in Iraq.
Let’s build a hovercraft with Brittany
I swear to you, I looked through a bunch of videos on how to build one of these things and this one was, by far, the best. Her design is the best combination of simplicity and effectiveness, plus she does a superb job of showing you precisely what to do in a short amount of time (the whole video is just under 5 minutes). So, here an approximately 12 year old girl shows you how to build a hovercraft just like she did for her science project:
Hey, everybody, let’s play shoverboard!
Cute. They do an ok job (not great, though–I wish they’d gone into more detail) in showing you how to build the hovercraft they used; I’m including it because it should give you some ideas for some more sophisticated designs you could try, plus the game looks like it could actually be a lot of fun with a few people playing along:
How to make a mini toy hovercraft in about 5 minutes
You need a CD you don’t mind ruining, a balloon, some superglue, and a water bottle top, that’s it. I love little things like this you can make in 5 minutes in your kitchen, so cool:
Here’s an excellent set of free plans on how to build a hovercraft with step-by-step instructions and excellent diagrams, have a look: Ulta-Simple Hovercraft Plans
There’s another set of plans here that you can download as a PDF.