Death of A Dream

It's been a number of weeks now since anything has been done. Twice I showed up to work on it and was left waiting for half an hour with nobody in sight. After some very easy dectective work I have discovered that the project is on hold and will probably be axed and gotten rid of.

So my dream of racing across land and sea in a hovercraft that I helpd build seems to have come to an end. :(

Downsides

Unfortunately due to the college workload I haven't been able to go along to the hovercraft building for a few weeks now.
Unlikely to get there this week either. Fingers crossed that I do so that I can update everything.

9/2/12 Fibrefail

The third meeting of our intrepid band of builders traded some faces again, Aiden was busy fighting the hordes of Orks and so Nick returned to the fold to take his place.
And so we began attempting to repair the damage with some new fibreglass layers, as illustrated below!

Mixed up the resin nicely, but everything we managed to do wound up with it undoing everything before. The curves of the area we had to repair, combined with the low temperatures meant that the resin just didn't set in time. So we ended up having to take it all off again. So that's 4 weeks gone and we have yet to achieve more than figuring out where things go that we can't attach yet thanks to the damage caused by parties unknown......sigh.

On with the visual aids!

1/2/12... 2 Steps Forward, 5 Steps Back

The second part of our heroic quest into the world of Hovercraft crafting began with the addition of a new lead, another tutor called Mark, he will lead the show on Wednesday nights and Ian shall lead us on Thursdays. We were down two of our intrepid number due to various reasons. Anywhoo a quick visual inspection of the craft lead to a lot of internalisation of unsuitable language. There had been some, well quite a bit of damage caused by various parties. So the time was spent trying to figure out how we were to mend the injuries caused by those conspiring against us! So we came to a close with some ideas on how to fix things next time around.....

Have some images!

Not this time

Sorry for the lack of post last week, Hovercraft club was cancelled, still on for this week though!

Thursday 19/1/2012. H Day....

Last night at 1900 hours GMT, I walked down an unlit path into an old Gym turned art room. Upon entering this space I was greeted by one of my Creative Technologies tutors, henceforth known only as Ian, along with a box, an array of orange fibreglass shapes and some lengths of metal.

So began a time of great mystery and more than a little umming and ahhing. Pointing at pieces and guessing in marvel at their potential use or purpose. Measuring how big the engine was, using the time tested method of seeing how heavy it was. The arrival of our 3rd member Aiden was greeted with relief that an extra pair of hands and sharp mind would aid us greatly in our floaty quest.

There continued much man speak, involving the power of 10 horses, drag, torque and the lack of breaks. Before we had a moment of clarity, an epiphany.....we had figured out where the engine was supposed to go! Eureka! So we grabbed some bolts and assembled the engine seating. Caution dictated that perhaps we should not bolt it to the frame, in case we had missed out the assembly of a support frame and just broke it. It was then that a distant sound alerted us to the arrival of more potential Hovercrafterians. Two of my friends from the College; Alex, henceforth known as Al, and Nick, henceforth known as Nick. Their appearance made it apparent that this project had the interest and man power to see it through to completion and of course Hover based joy and potential injury.

After a few more realisations and figuring outs, we had, between us, revealed the place and/or purpose of most of the components. At this time we decided that without the required masks, gloves, overalls and foam cutting tools we could go no further.

And so it was that the first meeting of the Hovercrafterians was concluded. 5 men with no past experience or knowledge attempt to build a Hovercraft.....Impossible? Madness? Grown up Lego? What are the 12ft long L bars for? Keep up with the posts to find out.

To be continued next week............