Model Hovercraft Circuits

Hover Higher With Double Height Skirts!

Want more hover height? One of the unique aspects of our skirts is that you can, once again, use a modular building blocks approach to model hovercraft construction. With our skirts, you can do the most basic building blocks activity there is: you can stack them up!

A good rule of thumb, found in all introductions to hovercrafting, is that the skirt's height should not be more than 1/10 of the craft's width -- any more skirt height than that, and the craft will become unstable and will be at risk of falling over. It is a good rule of thumb, but it is fun to test this for yourself. Unfortunately, it is usually a chore to construct a skirt. With our skirts, it is fairly easy to stack them up and arrange their inflation so that each tier inflates when the lift fan is turned on, and deflates when it is turned off. Does it work for getting over obstacles? Sort of! A GH-2 with a double tier skirt is able to hop over taller obstacles, but is noticeably more unstable. It is definitely fun to play around with. And of course, you can always build a hovercraft using a wider hull (as discussed elsewhere on this website) and then using a taller skirt will make a lot more sense.

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