My Sevtec Explorer project

Explorer operation (2001-01-06)

In a fifth set of video clip of my Explorer in operation we recorded footage in place where it's usually difficult to move during the winter time. But with hovercraft it's just to drive there.

Weather was cloudy as you can see and wind was forecasted to raise during the afternoon. Temperature was around 0C (32F) more on the warmer side.

There was only two people onboard. First curve i usually have had problems with went now smoothly.

Weather has stayed above freezing point for some time now and it shows. Open areas were spread and here and there were small (growing) perfectly round holes in the ice as usually is during spring when ice starts to melt. Still there was few fisherman, but now they stayed pretty much only few meters from shoreline. We tried again to stay in tracks we've left there during earlier operations as Explorer breaks ice easily if it's as thin as it now was.

We drove over 10 kilometers (6.2miles) to head wind to get to location where camera crew had driven by car so that they would be there waiting once we appear from horizon. I was doing 30-35km/h (18-22mph ) to 8-10m/s (18-22mph) head wind observing possible fishermen and leaving enough space to them while passing. During our trip my cell phone started to ring and chief of camera crew (my girlfriend) told that while parking car she got stuck in snow with it. So now we have a rescue mission in our hands. She wanted to know if should start with the camera right away or should we first move the car as it was partially blocking road. I advised her to put up the camera and start shooting as car blocking the way would force other road users to slow down before passing camera crew.

In no time we could see the bridge where camera was located and we decided to enter between couple of small island just to get protection from wind to get speed up for the camera. We passed the bridge slowly just to be sure not to smash the prop to support beams. We had plenty of clearance as was studied from map before and we could easily go under at normal speed. We continued to the bay where years ago i spent my summers sailing and fishing. Back then it was about the biggest sea i could think of, but now it seemed rather small. But that was nothing compared to feeling when we turned and blasted back to tail/side wind ! Glad that i did 180 as early as i did as i took much longer time to slow down from ~60km/h (37mph) as it took to stop from 35km/h (22mph). Bridge really enclosed fast. Well there would have been open area before the bridge which would have eventually slowed me down, but it was exciting enough this way too.

We throttled under the bridge and took a tight turn to help the camera crew with the car. We pushed it back to road and i made good trails so that it would be easy to just start and drive off with it. We got back to Explorer and camera was almost ready when we took off and made one more passing under the bridge and headed back home. I wanted to take the advantage of the tail wind and headed first side wind to have long straight of tail wind. We passed the closest islands and stopped to see if camera crew was able to take off too. No problems so we started the record attempt. I didn't throttle full, but somewhere along the last phase of our trip GPS recorded top speed of 60,9km/h (37.8mph) to almost tail wind of now ~10m/s (22mph). We stopped for awhile to test the off road capabilities of Explorer on our way back. We crossed tiny islands and rocks, some of them high enough to cause aluminum angle bars to scratch in them. Reason for this playing was to give time to camera crew to be in position when we get back to hoverport. And there they were when we slowly entered the area. Perfect landing and there we were.

Total of 23,8km (15,8miles) was recorded by GPS today. Today it was mostly from trip to and back from bridge high enough to allow Explorer be driven under on cushion.

Clip #20 - Approach

Versions:

Trying to seek protection from the wind between islands.