Al Fin's 2009 Small Vehicle Survival Award Winner
The HovPod personal hovercraft is built for durability and versatile travel on all types of terrain. From water to mud to sand to ice to snow to pavement, this little package is not just for exhilaration and mirth. It can get you places few other craft can take you, quickly and economically.
If you need a quick evac out of a gridlocked city that is located on a river, coastline, or harbour, this little airboat is the next best thing to a personal helicopter that can put down on land or water.
Al Fin engineers are working on a fairly simple modification which will allow the HovPod to fly, using inflatable wings. Put simply, it will require more power, and hull materials with more favourable strength to weight characteristics. More on that option as developments allow.
Labels: amphibious vehicles, escape
posted by al fin at 3:38 am
3 Comments:
Like a personal helicopter that was being built by a small company, I think it was called the Mosquito and was a single person craft, there could definately be some advantages in certain applications. While neither would be as economical as a well engineered car on a well built highway, they might actually be a more fuel efficient option than driving a heavy off road vehicle around ponds, lakes and rivers. And the reduction in erosion and habitat damage over traditional off road craft are quite a bonus. The hovercraft would be ideal for transiting areas with low vegitation and many aquatic spaces while a personal chopper would be great for rocky and wooded area if some small landing pads were scattered around.
Material science advances (in cost, strength and weight), computer aided controls and computer aided designs, many new innovations are becoming available.
I prefer a good all around vehicle that can take trails and streams in stride and refuel along the way, a good riding mule.
I believe that hovercraft become more efficient the bigger they are since the power put into lift goes up with the circumference whereas the craft's mass goes up with volume.
If so it should be most economical at ocean liner size. In which case the fact that we are building small suggests an inherent, presumably regulatory, big organsation conservatism.
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