A radio-controlled hovercraft built by Hans and Jasper Jansen

In autumn 2003, when seeing me working on my tube amplifier, my eldest son Jasper (born 1990) decided he wanted to build some radio controlled model. But it should not be something as common as a car or a boat....

After some internet study, he found the website by Mark Porter. This website contained building instructions for a Griffon 2000 TDX hovercraft. Then the proposal was to build this hovercraft together and I agreed.

Mark's site gives a lot of info on bulding the Griffon model hovercraft. Many people have built this model as can be seen from the Griffon gallery on Mark's site (many photo's there are clickable and lead you to other websites).

The model is built from plywood (0.8 and 0.4 mm) and balsa wood. The skirt is made from kite fabric. Note that is impossible to glue this material. The motors (MegaX 600, 7.2 V) are from Protech. The batteries used are two NiCd-type Sanyo 6-cell packs (2000 mAh each) which gives almost 10 minutes of 'flying time' before recharging is needed. A two-channel R/C system from Futaba is used to control the rudder and, together with a Jamara Profi HF 40 II speed controller, the propulsion motor. The lift motor runs on full speed without control.

I collected some photo's below. All photo's are clickable to enlarge.