Got to love it. A man. A booth. A very professional cheesy vinyl sign. Good 3D modelling graphics though! Looks like they got product! But ... wait ... where is it?
The only thing that looks like a model is that white testbed in a warehouse with the laughable nylon shroud hiding what we must believe are the vertical rotors. So ... this thing is just a giant squirrel cage fan then? And that's supposed to make it do tricks that other hovercraft haven't to date been able to make happen?
I'll use the basic gravity tests:
It will fly higher than conventional hovercraft. Why? Because the new fan has the ability to push more AIR through the shroud? If so, then it will take WAY more horsepower. Why? Because HP goes up by the cube of moved-air velocity. Lets say the amount of air is 2X. 2X faster (got to have that to get up higher), 2X more air-mass moving. E = 1/2 MV^2 ... so we get V^3 proportionate energy costs. Physics can't get around that.
The rotor novelty then doesn't seem to matter one iota from an energy perspective. It could make a difference by making the whole structure smaller (but which aggravates the V^3 issue) and more compact. It doesn't seem though that it would actually be any better than a conventionally canted radial propeller.
The other thing that will cause more energy to be sucked away is that the bigger the ground-effect gap, the more PRESSURE the down-ward pointed airstream has to maintain. I guess the "standard solution" around that is to induce enough impulse velocity into the airstream so as to lighten the apparent weight of the craft itself - not by hovercraft-type pressure build-up, but by the simple expedient of a really high speed airstream. An "upside down helicopter", so to speak.
Well, if that's the answer then there are a couple of REAL WORLD nasty problems that any one of us could immediately predict: jetsom. A wind velocity that high (necessarily hundreds of miles per hour) would be lofting quite a miasma of nasty objects ... right back into the inlet of the rotor. Branches, twigs, leaves, tons of spray over water, dirt, dust, sand, mud. And those blade tips will have to be rotating very near the speed of sound. Last I heard, good old Rolls Royce spent just under $10,000,000,000 (billion!) on designing the front-rotors of its turbo-fan engines to withstand ... a chicken and a few tiny (sand sized) grits.
Methinks that this device is hardly ever going to be a "consumer" contraption - even in the recreational sense.
Finally ... what's its "graceful failure" trajectory look like when the squirrels-on-steroids fanblade decides to unceremoniously deflagrate? I mean, it will be shooting metal and fiber bits out at near gun-barrel velocities, in ALL directions. And, the occupants will find themselves suddenly (if not dead), flying along with no lift. In no particular direction except... DOWN. That'll be a hell of a landing.
Moral of the story: hovercrafts are not for Johnny. Puny personal hovercrafts are not for Dad or Jenny either. As "UAVs" go, they're incredibly noisy, and so limited in scope that I can find no compelling reason to have one, over, say, a nearly silent battery-powered, fixed wing craft, or in the format of one of the endlessly produced hobbyist helicopters.
GoatGuy
abcabc
· 7 months ago
I have to agree with Goat Guy - at least a bit. It does look though, that the guy in the photo has an rc controller and is actually flying the contraption hiding the companies name.
HelenJHowell
· 2 months ago
Its not surprising that these 2 people can be divided into 2 groups: those with snow corruption and shale. Here are some tips to Best snow blower help you enjoy the white stuff again.
All Comments
The only thing that looks like a model is that white testbed in a warehouse with the laughable nylon shroud hiding what we must believe are the vertical rotors. So ... this thing is just a giant squirrel cage fan then? And that's supposed to make it do tricks that other hovercraft haven't to date been able to make happen?
I'll use the basic gravity tests:
It will fly higher than conventional hovercraft. Why? Because the new fan has the ability to push more AIR through the shroud? If so, then it will take WAY more horsepower. Why? Because HP goes up by the cube of moved-air velocity. Lets say the amount of air is 2X. 2X faster (got to have that to get up higher), 2X more air-mass moving. E = 1/2 MV^2 ... so we get V^3 proportionate energy costs. Physics can't get around that.
The rotor novelty then doesn't seem to matter one iota from an energy perspective. It could make a difference by making the whole structure smaller (but which aggravates the V^3 issue) and more compact. It doesn't seem though that it would actually be any better than a conventionally canted radial propeller.
The other thing that will cause more energy to be sucked away is that the bigger the ground-effect gap, the more PRESSURE the down-ward pointed airstream has to maintain. I guess the "standard solution" around that is to induce enough impulse velocity into the airstream so as to lighten the apparent weight of the craft itself - not by hovercraft-type pressure build-up, but by the simple expedient of a really high speed airstream. An "upside down helicopter", so to speak.
Well, if that's the answer then there are a couple of REAL WORLD nasty problems that any one of us could immediately predict: jetsom. A wind velocity that high (necessarily hundreds of miles per hour) would be lofting quite a miasma of nasty objects ... right back into the inlet of the rotor. Branches, twigs, leaves, tons of spray over water, dirt, dust, sand, mud. And those blade tips will have to be rotating very near the speed of sound. Last I heard, good old Rolls Royce spent just under $10,000,000,000 (billion!) on designing the front-rotors of its turbo-fan engines to withstand ... a chicken and a few tiny (sand sized) grits.
Methinks that this device is hardly ever going to be a "consumer" contraption - even in the recreational sense.
Finally ... what's its "graceful failure" trajectory look like when the squirrels-on-steroids fanblade decides to unceremoniously deflagrate? I mean, it will be shooting metal and fiber bits out at near gun-barrel velocities, in ALL directions. And, the occupants will find themselves suddenly (if not dead), flying along with no lift. In no particular direction except... DOWN. That'll be a hell of a landing.
Moral of the story: hovercrafts are not for Johnny. Puny personal hovercrafts are not for Dad or Jenny either. As "UAVs" go, they're incredibly noisy, and so limited in scope that I can find no compelling reason to have one, over, say, a nearly silent battery-powered, fixed wing craft, or in the format of one of the endlessly produced hobbyist helicopters.
GoatGuy