Hovercraft Backwater Adventures

Blowin in the wind

2012-02-17T05:17:00.000-08:00

In years past I considered getting involved in flying ultra lights, one thing that turned me away was the limited fly time due to wind. Recently someone told me they heard you couldn't fly a hovercraft in windy conditions. Interesting I thought a WindSled that couldn't operate in the wind. The truth of the matter is you can fly a hovercraft on windy days, the real question is why? A hovercraft will be affected by the wind, but so is a car or a semi truck each has it's peculiar reaction to the wind. A semi truck can be overturned if the wind is too high, a car may be tossed around by the wind, and the same is true of a hovercraft. So why fly? If your flying for fun and your having to buck a high wind would you bother? Probably not, however if you are a rescue worker and have to fly your hover to perform a rescue then you would and could. The question now become how high of a wind can you fly in? So many questions and so many different answers. A smaller hover may be able to be operated more effectively in a higher wind than a larger hover simply due to the mass you are moving. I own a twin prop 16 foot hover that has a lot of mass, when flying in the wind it works like a giant sail on a boat and the wind pushes it around a lot. My smaller Hoverjet GT a 10 foot hover, flies with relative ease in wind speeds around 20 simply because it has a lot of power with much less mass. Another consideration is the surface you are flying on. If you are on open water the larger hover with it's weight, size, and power, which in the case of my twin prop is 340 HP, plows through the waves with ease, I can fly it in chop of two to three foot waves and just plow through them. My GT is tossed around a lot in that high of waves either climbing them or plowing through them so you find yourself battling the waves and it is not a very fun ride. The point of the matter is I have never been stopped by flying due to the wind I have just chosen at times not to. I would be fairly confident to say you could operate a Hovertechnics hover in winds up to around 50 mph if you had to but again the question is why? If I had to use my hover to rescue someone I would if I was doing it to have fun I doubt I would fly it under a wind much over 20 mph simply because it wouldn't be fun. I can fly my hover in the rain but again why would I? Bottom line is you can fly a hover in the wind but you're going to be blown around by it and remember everything has it's limits.

The Potomac River and Conquering my fears part 2

2012-01-31T03:50:00.000-08:00

Call me a sissy but I am here and now admitting to one of my greatest fears... Spiders. That's right not just a spider but a lot of spiders, creepy, crawling, and ugly and as I reached up my hand the log above my head was covered in them. Now was a moment of decision do I let my male passenger who is a rescue worker and I'm sure has faced many dangerous situations find us crushed between a log and the rushing water or do I reach up grab the log and push us off to the side. What to do? Well in that moment my mind and reflexes sprang into overdrive and I realized if I didn't reach up and push us away from that log I would be pinned in that spot with all those creepy spiders dropping into my hover and then crawling all over me. So in one heroic moment I reached up and with cat like speed I pushed us away gunned the engine and broke out from under the log and into a boulder patch that was nothing short of a train wreck of boulders in front of me. I thought I can face this at least it's not covered with spiders. With that I attacked the boulder field and had to raise my hover up on cushion turn sharply and then set it down to move past the next boulder. The entire field of boulders ran about 35 feet and was like a maze of rocks in from of me with just enough room to slide my hover past it. I was satisfied with the hovers performance and maneuverability. By now I was working my way around the lack of power in my engine and we were able to get through the boulder field with relative ease and all I could think about was that nasty log filled with spiders.

The Potomac River and Conquering my fears

2012-01-28T05:09:00.000-08:00

I made it up and over the falls with no problem. We then headed upstream and at each new level there were new challenges. I thought to myself does this thing ever end? It was one obstacle after another and each time the hover rose up and over the top of it. My passenger would point and I would direct the hover to that area. I began to realize that if I had my smaller hover this thing would have been even more fun to fly. Then we would come to another patch of boulders and I would twist and turn the hover up over that obstacle. Flying the Potomac is unlike anything I had ever flown before only because of the extreme frequency of the obstacles. My passenger directed me to the far right side of the river, I could see the left side had a pretty significant waterfall shoot so I assumed he wanted to avoid it. By this point I knew I could climb through the shoot so it really didn't matter to me which way we went. As we maneuvered through the rocks on that were strewn along the right side of the river I began to be concerned that where we were heading had no water coming over the top it was just a huge boulder with nothing but dry ground around it. I had no idea why my passenger wanted to go that way but I obliged him. Now as we approached what appeared to be the end of the water flow I turned the hover on a 90 degree turn and saw a large tree laying across the only exit available to me other than traveling back down stream to take another path. I accessed the situation and felt that I could get under the tree I approached the water shoot that was streaming under the tree and realized I had missed judged the height of the opening by a couple of inches. I thought "no problem I'll just reduce the lift and slide under the tree" however when I let the hover down the current caught us and started pulling us toward the base of the tree which would have wedged us in a really awkward position so I reached up with my hand to push the hover back on track. Now I've been in some really bad situations with my hovers and I've learned to work my way out of them but this particular situation had a very ugly addition that I had not anticipated, as I reached my hand up to push us back on track my eyes beheld a frightening sight.

Potomac 101

2012-01-08T20:12:00.000-08:00

It took a while to get to sleep after having the image of that river imprinted in my brain but fatigue took over and I finally drifted off, it was a short night because there was work to do in the morning before I took my hover to meet my challenge. On the way to Brunswick we ran through one monsoon after another and my hover filled up with water so I had to clean that out. After cleaning 5 inches of water out of the inner hull of my hover I lubed all the cables and made sure my oil injector tank was full, I was about as ready as I was ever going to be so I returned to the dinning area of the motel and had a quick bite of breakfast and it was time to leave. I figured crossing back over the Potomac in the daylight would reveal less of a challenge that the dim light of evening had exposed but in daylight all I saw was more boulders and white water. I told my wife I didn't think it would be that bad I had flown over stuff similar to that back in Illinois and this was just more of it, the truth was I wasn't sure I could even do it but hey ya can't let your woman know that sort of thing so I decided to make it seem like it was really nothing. We arrived at the firehouse and met our host answered a lot of questions they had about the hover and laid out a plan for the demonstration. When we got to the river launch two firemen were going with me on the demonstration. I hadn't gotten very far into the launch when I knew it was not going to be pretty. My hover for whatever reason was not running on full power and it barely got the three of us up on cushion. I went about 200 yards and we faced the first hurdle. As I approached the first of a series of whitewater areas I was surveying the incline and the force of the water dropping down the three foot drop through a shoot about ten feet wide. I new under full power my hover could fly over it but since things weren't going so well in the power supply of my machine I had serious doubts about making it over this first waterfall. Now I really wanted to impress these guys but I also wanted us to be safe so I had to make a decision about whether we would progress or not. I shut the hover down and asked my passengers if they would mind if I let them off on some rocks at the base of this first rock challenge while I flew through the shoot to test it out. Since the hover was already struggling and neither of them wanted to jeopardize our safety they agreed to land and dismount the hover while I attempted this first obstacle. I dropped off my passengers and pointed the hover toward the waterfall hoping the engine would take me through to the top.