Years of hovercraft experience
Each of the founder members of the e-hovercraft group has been actively designing and building Light Hovercraft since the late 1960’s but the use of electric rather than petrol motors presents new challenges and fascinating opportunities.
Many other pioneers have explored building small electric craft, either using electric lawn mower motors to build craft for children or extrapolating electric model aircraft technology to build small craft generally suitable only for tarmac or lawns.
The motivation of the e-hovercraft group was to build something with land and water performance similar to today’s petrol craft but significantly quieter and more planet friendly.
Keith Oakley
spent 10 years analyzing the noise made by over 150 hovercraft worldwide mostly using a homemade beamforming system which located the source of each noise to within about 10cm. Using the knowledge gained and in conjunction with 2 light hovercraft manufacturers, he developed Quiet One (Q1) – a petrol powered single seater radically quieter than it’s peers.
See TechTalk for more info on Quiet Hovercraft
That experience, together with Owen Ellis’s development of a viable electric lift system, has been incorporated into the design of ‘Sound of Silence’ . Development started with just a standalone thrust unit on the lawn. After 4 years of development at home and test runs at Hoverclub of Great Britain racing events and cruising holidays in UK and France the thrust has been gradually increased to the point where it’s now a viable 3 seat amphibious cruiser.
See TechTalk for 2022 Progress Report
Owen Ellis
Owen’s entry into the electric world was via modifying one of his Renegade Hovercraft with an electric system and attempting to make it reliable.
This was followed by a semi scale model of a new design (the Revolution). This was a full electric craft powered by two electric lawnmower engines. Whilst it could operate with an adult, it was primarily used by his grandchildren. He spent 5 years developing an electric lift system for his 3 seat ‘Revolution’ cruiser. This hybrid craft uses an electric centrifugal lift fan and a conventional petrol thrust fan.
see TechTalk for more info on the ‘Revolution’
Owen has now clocked up many hundreds of hours with two ‘Revolution’ craft. One is based at his house near Sydney with direct access to a large shallow tidal lake, much of it un-navigable by conventional boat. Another is based at his house in Montreal with direct access to the St Lawrence River where he can explore the ice and snow in winter. His experience is that the electric lift motor is highly reliable once the initial development issues are sorted.
Graham Nutt
has developed many hovercraft over the years under the Scarab banner. He has published plans for many of the craft, leading to Scarab craft being built by amateurs all over the world.
Graham is currently translating the electric technology from ‘Sound of Silence’ into a smaller single seat craft – the Scarab 25E
A major upgrade in the Scarab 25E is the use of second hand batteries from electric cars. They promise the same power and weight of the earlier home assembled battery packs but at lower cost and without weeks of self assembly work.
Although our work so far has been about developing a cruising craft Graham has been giving thought about what form e-hovercraft competitions might take. Like Formula E for cars it’s unlikely to be a direct replacement for todays petrol powered racing but something that plays to their low noise and other advantages. See Competition for more on these ideas.