| Another demontration. | ||
| It's really been awhile since last operation.
Actually haven't even gone to check the craft of how it's doing since operation in July. Allthough my
father-in-law has been at the hoverport weekly so my Explorer has not
been left totally unattended. |
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| If my memery serves me correctly, it was about a
year or half years ago when i was contacted by a person who was
interested in seeing Sevtec in operation, especially the skirt design
used. But it took some time for those plans to materialize since it
finally took place 23rd of November. |
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| Weather was not perfect for this. Few degrees
below freezing point, wind and light snowing was to be expected, but
since it was agreed it was agreed and that's it. Who knows how long it
would have taken until next change to do it. |
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| Just as we suspected, the river had frozen enough
to make crossing it difficult. There was about 4cm (1½inch) ice
close to shoreline, but maybe 2cm (3/4inch) at middle. We got through
by pulling a boat to break the ice but it took some time even if we
only had to it for 20m (60ft). We'll the next crossing will be easier
since there is a path now. |
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| We had some tools with us, it's been over four
months remember: spare battery, battery charger, heat gun AND engine
block heater cord. First thing to do was to connect battery charger to
crafts battery and then start wiping the snow of etc. We did have
engine block heater, cord from heater to plug and long extension cord,
but what we didn't have was special cord between extension cord and
heater cord - we left in the car. We decided to try without it, after
all battery was now connected to charger so it should help a lot.. |
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| Last time we were out there was this mysterious
fault that has haunted this craft awhile now. I was kinda interesting
to see of how things work this time as it seemed little better when we fixed something we found last time. |
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| We had plenty of time before our guests were to
arrive so we let the charger on for almost an hour before we first
triedto start the engine. It was quite a surpise when engine started
right off without any special tricks. At this point it was still tied
to one of the trees at the bank i could warm it with raised rpm. It
wasn't even frozen to the ground much. I let it run at 2000rpm and
increased the throttle gradually to the point where it showed
3500rpm and still responded flawlessly. Absolutely nothing wrong with
it and it was now at normal operating temperature. I stopped it to
prepare for test drive. |
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| After untieing the rope and putting it inside the
craft i was ready to take off. And yes as soon as i hit the water
engine starting playing once again. Now it wasn't that bad, but
noticeable. Didn't much disturb the short spin i did, but enough for me
to stay quite close if it stops completely. Got back pretty soon. |
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| We checked the skirt patch we didages ago and it
hard started to peel of - not good. We let the craft sit stil for
awhile and gave it another go. This time it was much worse and i barely
got back. Well i had warned our guests about this when we talked on the
phone so no surpises there. Actually it was time to cross the river to
go pick them up. |
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| We got back to the craft and discussed and looked
over it about an hour. At some point i noticed that skirt patch
mentioned earlier was now more than half loose so instead of
three small drainage holes there was now one small and one quite a big
one - not good at all. |
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| It was getting dark so i briefly demonstrated the
craft just by operation it at hoverport with the help of bow ports and
helpful audience. We moved it also to lay on top of few logs so it
would not freeze to the ground when winter actually gets here for real. |
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| When we go back to our cars these two gentlemen suggested we should continue the discussion indoors. We did and spent almost two hours in a smoky bar to discuss hovers. The other guy had several interesting stories about hovercrafts and hovercraft designs he has been involved with - including hydraulic drives and various contrl systems, quite fascinating. Check www.pellosmarin.fi and follow Hovercraft link. | ||
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| And as a
result they wanted to know of how much i'd want for my craft.
That's a surpise for me, but i guess bying a craft is faster than
start making one from scratch - if you eventually will have and need a
craft quickly. Haven't given any price yet, but let's see how things go... |
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