#ThrowbackThursday: Neoteric has come a long way since the 1960s

For #TBT, these excerpts from a 1966 Australian newspaper article give you a glimpse of the origin of Neoteric Hovercraft …

Successful Hovercraft Trials on Lake Colac

Two days of hovercraft trials climaxed yesterday when a blue and yellow experimental hovercraft skimmed from a paddock at Cororooke across Lake Colac and up the shore near Ross’ Point.

Aeronautical research technician Chris Fitzgerald swings the propeller of the hovercraft for a trail run

in Mr. Ted Boylan’s paddock at Cororooke. In the cockpit is pilot Rob Wilson. 

More than 20 carloads of people went to the lake yesterday afternoon to watch the craft … it rose gently on a cushion of air and with the slipstream from its aircraft propeller fanning the onlookers, it skimmed smoothly across the grass – for about 100 yards.

Then it came to a sudden halt “aground” in a slight depression in the paddock. It took four men on the end of a rope to get it moving again. “Far too rough,” muttered the leader of the team, 22-year-old Chris Fitzgerald. “We’ll keep getting stuck.”

But he and his assistants were not out to turn on a display. The purpose of their visit to Colac was to carry out final trials with the one-man, 16-foot hovercraft to iron out technical problems before going ahead with building a larger hovercraft capable of carrying four people and skimming two feet off the ground. Their present hovercraft has a clearance of little more than 4 inches.

Then the hovercraft struck a heap of rocks in the paddock, tearing the fiberglass curtains which retain the air under it and damaging the bow. This affected the performance of the craft but the team decided to go ahead with runs over the lake … finally the hovercraft glided in a wide arc across the smooth water and up onto the shore. Cameramen and photographers recorded the run.

The idea of building the hovercraft originated in the minds of a group of former ATC cadets who were studying at the School of Mechanical Engineering at Melbourne University four years ago. They joined forces under the name of “Australian Air Cushion Vehicles Development”, which they hope to register soon as a company.

The original group of about 20 University students has dwindled to three, but they are keen to push ahead and have already prepared plans for a larger 100 hp hovercraft. They are Chris Fitzgerald, a technical assistant at the Aeronautical Research Laboratories; Rob Wilson, 21, an automotive technician with the Gas and Fuel Corporation; and Ron Davies, a Melbourne fireman.

Check out today’s Neoteric Hovercraft …

How does a hovercraft work?

Although often seen as a mysterious, even bizarre mode of transportation, it is conceptually quite simple. To understand how hovercraft work, it is necessary to realize that the dynamics are more closely related to aircraft than to boats or automobiles. 

As a member of the family of air cushion vehicles (ACVs) or ground effect machines, which includes wing-in-ground-effect or ram wings, surface effect ships, sidewall hovercraft, and surface skimmers, hovercraft, are the amphibious member of the air cushion vehicle family. They are the most novel among vehicles that are supported by pressurized air …

Learn more about hovercraft operation ...

Have a question about hovercraft? We’re here to answer – just post a comment.

History of the Hovercraft

A hovercraft is a flying machine, a type of air cushion vehicle. When it comes to flying machines, ideas easily date back to ancient Greece. This is not the case with air cushion vehicles.

The first recorded design for such a vehicle was in 1716 by Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish designer, philosopher and theologian. Swedenborg's design appeared in the fourth edition of Sweden's first scientific journal, Daedulus Hyperboreus, and is the first detailed technical description of a flying machine of any type.

Swedenborg's man-powered air cushion platform, basically a circular aircraft, resembled an upside-down boat with a cockpit in the center or a "flying saucer." His manually-operated device required the would-be pilot to use oar-like scoops to push air under the vehicle on each downward stroke in order to raise the hull out of the water. A working model of the design was never built, because Swedenborg soon realized that a human could not sustain the energy needed to power the oars. His concept required a source of energy far greater than any available at that time.

As with many other forms of transportation, significant progress had to wait until a lightweight motor was developed in the nineteenth century …

Read the full History of the Hovercraft, from 1700 to the present day …

Have a question about hovercraft? Just leave us a comment.

Exactly what is a hovercraft?

A hovercraft is one of the children of the air cushion vehicle (ACV) family that flies above the earth's surface on a cushion of air. It is powered by an engine that provides both the lift cushion and the thrust for forward or reverse movement. The hovercraft child is a true multi-terrain, year-round vehicle that can easily make the transition from land to water because it slides on a cushion [bubble] of air with the hovercraft skirt slightly brushing the surface.

To learn more about hovercraft, read Hovercraft Q&A …

Have a question about hovercraft? Just post it as a comment.

Building Floats! Honest!

Tribune-Star, Terre Haute, Indiana USA
7 November 2009
by Lisa Trigg

Terre Haute company demonstrates hoverlifter technology on 7,000-pound building

Using puffs of air to float a 7,000-pound building to a new location may sound a little far-fetched. But it took only a few guiding hands on Friday to move a steel structure about 300 feet while it floated on skirts holding a cushion of air underneath it. The seemingly gravity-defying feat was pulled off at Neoteric Hovercraft Inc., a Terre Haute company that has become adept at doing things differently.

“I didn’t want to bring a crane in,” company president Chris Fitzgerald said as he oversaw the project Friday morning. “The power lines overhead prevent that. And I didn’t want to mess up the landscape or the trees.”

 

The all-steel building was constructed at Neoteric’s manufacturing site on Tippecanoe Street. It was moved on the property to a spot near the main office, and will be used as fireproof storage for films, videos and documentation of the company’s efforts during the past 30-plus years.

From the air pressure needed to lift the building, using just two hovercraft fans at either end, Fitzgerald said the building’s weight was calculated at 7,060 pounds. As the fans hummed away, a crew used ropes at its corners to guide the floating structure around one large building, through a maze of young oak trees, and onto a grassy slope that presented a bit of a challenge in keeping the building level.

 

“We’ll have to as adjust as they go,” Fitzgerald estimated, checking out a 12-foot gap between the trees. A suggestion for a tree saw was rejected. “That’s cheating,” Fitzgerald declared.

Totaling up the float time, it took around five minutes for the building to travel to its new location. The Neoteric staff took on the challenge with the gusto of kids trying to build the perfect mousetrap. “And this was done with a disorganized football team,” Fitzgerald said after the move.

But the concept of moving a heavy object on a cushion of air is nothing new for Fitzgerald. He has created a hoverlifter that is used to move half-ton units around on top of a 140-acre factory roof. That company used to have to shut down factory operations while a helicopter was brought in to move the rooftop units. But Fitzgerald designed a vehicle that could carry the units along a series of rooftop ramps, eliminating the need for the helicopter and allowing factory work to continue inside during the process.

Fitzgerald easily demonstrates the concept of hovering an object by puffing air at a piece of paper lying flat on a table. The gust lifts and moves the paper. By laying quarters on the paper, the paper’s direction is adjusted. That may seem an oversimplification of the process, but a hovercraft operates on a similar principle of weight balanced on air. The jupe, which is French for petticoat or skirt, controls the amount of air needed to lift the object.

Inside the two large buildings on the Neoteric property, hovercraft are made from start to finish. The bodies are created from molded fiberglass and are attached to foam-filled hulls. The engines, controls, seats and other systems are added according to the purchaser’s specifications.

Hovercraft have many uses, whether recreational, rescue, commercial or military. They can hover along multiple terrains, moving swiftly along land, mud, asphalt and water. Since it hovers on a pocket of air, it can pass above debris and reach places unattainable by boat or all-terrain vehicle.

The company currently is building a concept craft for the U.S. Navy. And several of its machines are used by law enforcement agencies and rescue teams as well as the military. Neoteric also rehabs and services vehicles it has built.

One current customer uses a Hovertrek™ for his pond maintenance business. He can spread chemicals in the water and easily access ponds and lakes without damaging the landscaping or environment around the water. A Massachusetts company uses one of Neoteric’s hoverlifters for its cranberry-growing operation.

“They are almost an unknown vehicle,” Fitzgerald said of hovercraft, but he hopes that changes as the Internet helps publicize his product to a worldwide market. In the meantime, Fitzgerald used Friday’s demonstration of moving the building as an example of how a different, but time-proven technology can be used to simplify a weighty situation.