Saw this hovercraft at the local club. 

The bottom was a thick sheet of plastic, with holes in it for the air to escape through it.  Nice setup on the rudder to direct the airflow from the ducted fan.  Built by a high school going youngster.

The most interesting part was that they are going to build a bigger nitro engine powered one 

Gr8 hovercraft
using df is a nice idea
just imagining how the dfs[ducted fans] are made to  continously run uncontrolable or they are attached to some channel of the radio?
   



Has anyone else tried making a hovercraft?

Saw it in action today 

Both ducted fans that are embedded in the fuselage to help with the hover are connected to the throttle control. During the demo today, one of these ducted fans stopped working, so they just taped it completely shut so that the air would not escape through the dead fan.  They wanted all the air to only escape through small holes made in a plastic (more like polyurethane) sheet at the bottom, to give the hover effect.

is there any way that the fans which push aIR INTO THE SKIRT ARE  in an always on position?
connecting it to the throttle means no control over the forward movement of the craft

btw i also made  simple hovercraft like this one two and a half years ago

http://amasci.com/amateur/hovercft.html

i used 2 dc motor with toy prop of my teammate[he got it in an electroincs experiment  kit] and connected it to a rx/tx of a rc car with 1 9v alkaline battery

i produced a little thrust  but the main thing it worked
the skirt was inflated using vaccum cleaner and a boy weighting 40kg was able to ride it with vaccum cleaner mounted above it [under the range of its wire]

btw of what material is it constructed?

The main body seemed to be cut out of layers of ordinary packing foam (thermocole).

The two motors embedded in the fuse are only to provide "lift" for the craft, as the air escapes from underneath through small holes scattered on a think sheet of plastic.

All forward movement and steering is completely driven by the ducted fan placed in front of the rudder/tail-fin.