| It was time for demonstration for "soon-to-be-a-hovercrafter" Tero Ranta and his friend Riku Linström. | |||||||||||
| We had agreed to meet them at the small boat harbor at Saantee (or Sandö, swedish version of the same). Unfortunately my driving instructions were little bit vague although route itself is quite straight forward. But they made 160km (100miles) to get here from Turku so what's another 10km, right guys ? | |||||||||||
| Weather was quite good for us and for hovering. Only small waves (15-20cm, 6-8") if any and wind about 3-5m/s temperature was about 22C. | |||||||||||
| We started by taking an overall look of the craft but Tero was anxious to get on the bubble and we left the marina to look for a place where Tero could shoot some video footage for future reference. | |||||||||||
| We took a ride in waters where hovercraft is the only means of transportation because of the rocks lying just underneath the water surface. The place i had planned for the video session was unfortunately reserved by someone else so we had to take another look. But not until the first mandatory emergency stop because engine suddenly died just when i was about to demonstrate the Sevtec puff ports at the bow. This was immediately fixed by going to engine area and jiggling fuel pump relay. Maybe some day i actually fix this annoying problem, but so far it hasn't been that much of a problem, although embarrassing sometimes YES. Luckily Riku was seated and Tero managed to grab support from windshield frame before we dropped off cushion. No injuries, that's a relief. | |||||||||||
| I steered the bow of the craft to small rocky island and we all stepped out to check and discuss more about the craft. Tero and Riku stayed on this island as me and Jaana took the craft out to demonstrate the moves and maneuverability of the craft while Tero was shooting film. | |||||||||||
| Once i had annoyed people enjoying their summer vacations at their summer places enough i steered the craft back ashore to pick up Tero and Riku. Tero asked me to do same kind of landing as i did the first time. I warned him that usually it doesn't happen twice in row, but was able to do a decent one after all. | |||||||||||
| We did more hovertalk discussing drives, skirt and props. I get to do this so rarely face to face that i'm always carried away by this. We headed back to marina taking a detour. Since guys where wondering how it goes in river environment i took them to narrow river and we did just few hundred meters of river hovering to show how it goes. We headed back and i discovered a perfect landing area for hovercraft just besides the marina. Unfortunately in a process of getting uphill i caused excessive spray when at the same time gust of wind threw most of in wetting the whole crew. Well that goes with the territory and it wasn't that bad for people, perhaps for Tero's camcorder... | |||||||||||
| I'm not a fan of group photos, but this was one of those
events i'd like to have a group photo of.
Despite of my further driving instructions of a shortcut Tero and Riku found their way to Tampere using for IOM R/C sail boat race, only to discover that race had just ended. Oh, by the way i got new digital camera with all the goodies i could just dream with my old one. So clicking a picture will open you a larger version of the same picture in a new window now on! |
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