Last month I decided to build a hovercraft but was not sure on what I should build or where to get plans, or even a kit, so I emailed the hovercraft man himself, Mr Pete Bryant, who gave me a lot of good information. For my first craft I decided to get a simple kit, the Griffin 600 from PALAFORM. They do the kit for £49.99, just the model which Pete suggested, so I went and had a look and bought the craft. Within a few days it had arrived all in bits, so I got to work building; it went together easily until creating the duct for the fan. It was really hard to make a jig to bend the duct to the correct angles, so I decided to make the jig on the craft which I could take away once the duct and glue had bonded together. After that I had to make the cabin which took no time at all, then came the motor, rudders and all the other electrical gear which I had apart from the brushless motor and esc for it; so I had to buy one after again talking to Pete to see which was the way to go

Once I had all the duct and motor shelf glued and dried along came a new problem. Given that the hovercraft is made out of Depron sheet I had to be careful as to what paint I could use, since if I used the wrong type it would melt the depron that the duct and motor shelf was glued to. However, I had some Airfix paint which I tried on a off cut piece of depron and left to dry and it was ok, so that was what I used. Next came the skirt witch was already stitched together; all I had to do was to stick it to the craft's hull with double sided tape and then it was time for the first flight so out to the street! It was working and although I had trouble controlling it at first, I soon got the basics. However then it lost all the air in the skirt; what had happened was the tape had come off and it was not inflating... so back to the into the house! I was thinking what I could do and decided that if I got it stuck back down with the tape and then over that stuck duck tape it would solve the problem and it did so. Time for trial two, it worked and well until another disaster, the cabin had come away from its clips and the fan sucked it in... what a mess! Back in the house I had a good look and it was looking like needing a rebuild for a whole new cabin. However I decided to try and fix it, so I cut the damage off the back and got some spare depron and made up the new back of the cabin good as new.

I took it to the pond for the first time to see if it was going to work over water but I had a little problem. Yes it was working, but the skirt was only inflating to about 80% which meant the front was not full of air and therefore was dragging and slowing it down. But a few tweaks, and then it was working really well (see the photographs).