Saturday 7 June 2008

Man Powered Hovercraft

28 weeks ago I walked into my first class of my 5th and final year at Heriot-Watt uni were I have been studying for my masters degree in mechanical engineering. This class happened to be for our group project were we get put into groups of 5, get given £1000 and a project brief. The lecturers began reading out the project titles. The first group got given a powered hovercraft project, the second group got give a water jet powered hydrofoil and with bated breath we waited for ours . . . "group 3, we would like you to build a man powered hovercraft. We dont actually know if this is possible but give it a go anyway" or words to that effect. We left the room a bit dumfounded but after a bit of google action it turned out that a number of relatively successful attempts had been made although they had taken more than the 28 weeks that we had.
To cut a 28 week story short we were successful. We actually managed to build one that works nearly exactly as designed to which some people might think is strange for me to say but considering we have never really been given something like this to do before were we had complete control we are pretty proud of ourself. Its probably easier just to stick some photos up for people to look at.

I could sit here and type the spec of it out but that would probably just bore people so on the off chance anyone is interested drop me an email and I will try and answer any questions.

Stewart












2 comments:

Valutahandel.nu said...

A very interesting blog post about your hovercraft project. Wouldn't mind seing some technical details from what you manage to create. Did you continue to work on it also after the project ended? What's the buoyancy?

Stewart Munro said...

Hi, I can fire you some info on it no problem. Can you give me an email addess as it would probably be easier that way than in this.

Stewart