What Happened To Passenger Hovercraft? (bbc.com) 69
An anonymous reader writes: Although much has been written about hoverboards lately, hovercraft have largely faded from public imagination, BBC News reports. The Bond-esque 1960s sensation proved too noisy to roam inland rivers regularly, while too small to compete at sea with a new generation of conventional mega-ferries and high-speed car-carrying catamarans. Military aside, only a 10-minute English route and a Sino-Russian river border crossing keep hopes air-cushioned nowadays, while civilian operators wait for electric propulsion to become practical, aiming to reduce airplane-like noise levels and excessive fuel costs with new technology.
Missing Option: Everglades. (Score:1)
I'm a Florida tourist, you insensitive clod!
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Err, those are typically not hovercraft, but airboats [wikipedia.org], which work a wee bit differently.
(...though I can see the appeal of a hovercraft in mega-swampy areas like the Everglades...)
Re:Missing Option: Everglades. (Score:5, Interesting)
Airboats are still incredibly noisy.
I rode on one in Louisiana and IIRC it was basically a flat bottomed aluminum boat with a Chevy 454 V8 bolted to a stand in the boat with an actual airplane propeller attached. We all wore shooting muffs.
It was a pretty fun ride, though. On wide expanses of water, I'd swear it didn't turn per se, but sort of turned sideways until you'd built up enough thrust in the new direction to stop going the old direction. And it worked in water so shallow I couldn't believe it was floating by any definition. We sort of stopped in one shallow spot and I asked the guy "What happens if it gets stuck?" And he said "Well, we have to get out and push" which was fine, other than the 6 alligators I could count within about a 30 foot radius of the boat.
The whole experience had a touch of "Southern Comfort" (IMDB it) to it. We called a tourist place looking for a ride and the operator said it was out of season for him, but he said something like "Call Pierre Thibideaux, he'll probably take you out" and sure enough we drove to some remote spot on the bayou and this guy with a French accent was waiting with an airboat. Great guy, but of course having seen "Southern Comfort" I was a little worried where we might end up.
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Hey, that reminds me of "Southern Comfort"... have you seen it?
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Our office did hovercrafting for our Christmas outing/dinner - these kind of single seater hovercrafts [britishhovercraft.com]. They were far more physically demanding than any of us imagined. Like you say, when you turned them, the just kept going the same direction, but at right angles to the direction of travel. The trick was to lean into the turn and use the friction of the skirt to change the direction of travel. You basically knelt in the them and used your weight to steer.
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Thank god. I was hoping someone would mention Florida so I could post this:
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/1... [rawstory.com]
I blame SeaSpray. (Score:2)
I blame SeaSpray.
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The U.S. Marines are making great use of them.
There are a number of military advantages to hovercraft that don't apply to civilian applications:
1. They can move up onto the beach
2. They can move over coral reefs and submerged obstacles
3. They can move over minefields (the pressure is too dispersed to detonate them)
But there are also drawbacks:
1. They are expensive
2. They require a lot of maintenance
3. They have a lot of downtime
4. They are difficult to operate
5. They are dangerous: they can drift sideways in a turn, and they don't stop quickly.
Love riding hovercraft (Score:1)
I have fond memories as a teenager riding the hovercraft from Southampton to the Isle of Wight and back for summer holiday fun. Fun, fun, fun. If one was stood aft upon take off, the spray generated by the fans was enormous and you received a good soaking, which was pleasant on a warm summer day. It would douse your fags, though...
Full of eels (Score:5, Funny)
Never a good start...
Are you kidding me? (Score:2)
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the other boats got better (Score:2)
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About a decade ago, a local boat builder / operator bought a 60 foot commercial hovercraft to make 80 - 90 mile runs between various small towns. It was hoped it would be less expensive and much faster than the Alaska State Ferries. Was basically a flop. The thing kept breaking down - and this was with a group of people that were capable of building 100 foot aluminum boats. It was noisy. The ride was rough. It was expensive and basically had no cargo capacity.
Plain ol boats won out....
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Perhaps the main reason the hovercraft never took off is a more prosaic one - limited ability to operate in bad weather and rough seas. I have happy memories of sitting in an ever-lengthening queue in an English Channel ferry port for the best part of a day because of high winds and wave heights.
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The cross channel catamarans have long gone too, replaced by a train.
What they make floating trains now? Where does the track go? Huh?
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The cross channel catamarans have long gone too, replaced by a train.
What they make floating trains now? Where does the track go? Huh?
In a tunnel.
That's silly. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Also cool are the planes that flew a few feet above the water to take advantage of the ground effect. Caspian Sea Monster [imgur.com]
I understand they were discontinued because standard jet planes encounter less air resistance at 30,000 feet and actually end up using less fuel.
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And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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pish posh.
whatever happened to wing-in-ground effect craft? They could be quite large with a correspondingly large cargo capacity.
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whatever happened to wing-in-ground effect craft?
I seem to recall Hubertus Bigend [wikipedia.org] resurrecting one... ;)
Re:That's silly. (Score:4, Interesting)
What happened to passenger hovercraft? That's obvious; the flexibility they provide (amphibious, require little infrastructure) obviously doesn't offset their inherent disadvantages (lack of carrying capacity, poor fuel efficiency, etc) except for military applications. What I want to know is what happened to the hydrofoil? I got to ride on one from H.K. to Macao at a very young age; I remember being mildly disturbed at the speeds we were traveling at... I've never heard a peep about them, however.
Turns out they have their own disadvantages. Seasickness and reliability were a big problem with the last attempt to provide hydrofoil service in Hawaii... though it's been over 30 years since then, so maybe they are better now. Even fast catamarans couldn't succeed in Hawaii, though I think their problems were more political than technical.
http://beatofhawaii.com/hawaii... [beatofhawaii.com]
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https://www.turbojet.com.hk/en... [turbojet.com.hk]
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Hydrofoils never caught on because with the technology of the day unless you were traveling stupid proof route, in fairly nice weather with a pretty decent depth they were extremely dangerous. Hit a sand bar or a whale or some other fairly solid object and your ship takes a nose dive at 50 knots. That could (perhaps should) change today with GPS, sonar, radar & computer systems which could nowadays decrease the chances of such incidents or at least blunt their impact but there are still cost/maintenan
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There is regularly scheduled hydrofoil service between Athens and a handful of Greek islands. The ride is fast, but a little noisy. The boats are disturbingly powerful for their size. Being on one of them is the only time I've felt jerk (the time derivative of acceleration) in anything larger than a small motorboat. They are also very sensitive to water conditions ---you don't want to ride in them when it isn't nice and calm.
info -- http://www.aegeanflyingdolphin... [aegeanflyingdolphins.gr]
video of a Flying Dolphin approaching
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I did HK-Macau one way on hovercraft and one way on hydrofoil. Victoria Harbor is one place where arguably the hovercraft is a better solution, given the amount of submerged and semi-submerged debris in the water. I believe there was an accident recently when a hydrofoil hit something, forget if there were casualties or not.
Hydrofoils have come a long way though; look at what they do with sailboats now!
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As this is /., I'll get into some of the technical details. The resistance a hovercraft encounters is basically energy transferred to the water and dissipated as waves. The slower the hovercraft is moving, the greater this wave resistance.
More PoowwwerrrrRRR!! (Score:2)
The ex-Top Gear hosts showed their excitement for the craft by attempting to Revive it with better technology (portable Van for commuters) - and in a later episode a race though a city.
Although - they may have crushed any hopes that the technology would catch on by mocking the noise & mess they create in front of a "high-class" restaurant.
While driving in the race Clarkson indirectly showed how dangerous the craft can be - tight turns and short stops were impossible. Of course his buffoonery amplified
Tom Scott explains (Score:4, Informative)
Great video describing the downturn of the hovercraft and concorde etc - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYH1lPm41-0
Did it, once. (Score:5, Informative)
I rode on a hovercraft once - over the English channel from France to England. It was an interesting experience. Not worth repeating. It was extremely noisy. I would rather take a slower route.
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I did too - I loved it. And we took our car too. An hour after disembarking, the car stopped and wouldn't restart ... and then it did. And then it stopped. And started again.
Then later in the day, it recovered and all was well for the rest of the holiday. We figured the fuel tank had been shaken and stirred, and all the crap in there had decided to take a holiday down the fuel pipe to visit the engine...
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I thought it was great and would love to do it again. Certainly a lot bumpier than the turbo jet that runs between Hong Kong and Macau - that just felt like a really fast ferry.
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What you just made is called a boat. So why piss about floating that boat on a cushion of air when you could have just pointed that fan behind you and got a faster boat.
This is exactly the problem with hovercraft. Especially cargo-carrying. If you have to be bouyant enough to cope if the power fails, it's cheaper to let the power fail and be a boat instead.
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They sink when the power fails.
That isn't stopping the incredible growth in the marketplace for drones.
I'd expect a personal drone (i.e. one that can carry you as a payload) to be available way way before a personal hovercraft. Just watch out for the rotating knives.
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Personal hovercraft have been available for decades now. They're mostly used as toys because they have lousy directional control: only a rudder in the propwash, unlike large hovercraft which usually have vectored thrust at several points.
Waiting for electric propulsion? (Score:2)
...while civilian operators wait for electric propulsion to become practical
I expect they'll have a long, long wait.
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truck-boat-hovercraft-truck (Score:2)
Do not touch the trim.
https://youtu.be/uByeEObHaBA [youtu.be]
Hong Kong hovercraft (Score:2)
In the early 1990s one could travel between Hong Kong and Kowloon by hovercraft. It was an interesting change of pace, but I could see how it couldn't compete against the Star Ferry.
Jackie Chan happened (Score:2)
Capital Letters anyone? (Score:3)
What kind of world has it become that "Bond-esque" gets a capital letter, but English and Sino-Russian don't?
Hovercraft (Score:2)
Hovercraft have to LIFT their cargo. It's a stupendous waste of energy compared to other methods (floating their cargo, etc.). Only aircraft, hovercraft and things like cranes actually are required to lift their cargo and all take huge amounts of engineering and energy to do so.
For a quick sojourn across some water, it's a pointless waste of time and effort to lift the load up and then move it around, by blowing air at the floor - no matter how you skirt it. Helicopters are the only equivalent but they h