N500 hovercraft

[tomhugill]

The N500 Naviplane was a French hovercraft built by SEDAM (Société d'Etude et de Développement des Aéroglisseurs Marins) in Pauillac, Gironde for the cross channel route. Intended to have a large passenger and crew capacity, it was for a while the largest hovercraft. Only two were built. The first was destroyed by a fire before entering service, the second proved unreliable and was broken up in 1985 at the end of its service.

This is an almost unique scratch build (I've seen one on YouTube) about 4 foot long. She has a three blade 8inch lift prop three 4 inch thrust props. All brushless motors. She has an interesting skirt system, consisting not of a single bag skirt but approx 36 silicone rubber circles arranged in a double wall. Each is inflated and the outer level ones are attached together to form a continueous wall. This acts like a finger skirt meaning it passes over obstacles much better than the standard bag skirt.

Some pictures:

[Max-U52]

Where does he get those wonderful toys?

Interesting timing on this post. Just yesterday I was working on parts for the current U.S. LCAC. I wonder how many other countries currently have Hovercraft in service?

[tomhugill]

I was lucky, I know the chap the built it and when he was building it mentioned if he did want to sell let me know. What bits were going on the LCAC? Quite a few do, marines and special ops are quite fond of them. The Iranians have loads! The missile carrying srn6 are quite interesting.

[Max-U52]

I'm not exactly sure what the parts do (often the case in my industry) but they're these big shafts of some kind that are splined on one end and have a big flange at the other. If you were to take the bowl off the top of the Stanley Cup it would look a lot like these parts, and be about the same size.

[tomhugill]

That's pretty awesome!

Managed to get down to the lake today, managed to get some pictures/video in actions!











And the video:

phpBB [video]

[silversurfer1947]

Underneath it looks a bit like an octopus tentacle

[Max-U52]

That's just too cool. Will it make the transition from the water to the beach? That would be awesome. And who's that red headed guy with the transmitter?

[tomhugill]

That's just too cool. Will it make the transition from the water to the beach? That would be awesome. And who's that red headed guy with the transmitter?

It will go water to land no problem! Our ramp into the lake is quite steep for it so I needs a run up for get over but something less steep would pose no issues. As to the redhead I hear he's a bit of a douche but not let him hear that

[HERMAN BIX]

No we know who prince Harrys dad REALLY is !!!

[tomhugill]

No we know who prince Harrys dad REALLY is !!!

Hahaha! Although I think I might be younger than Harry