I treated my Venture AeroMarine Challenger 1 hovercraft from the 1980's to a fresh paint job. No longer military green it is now Fire Opal and Black in color. Other updates include smoothing of the cavity underneath the model and within the skirt, crankingup the throw of the triple rudders, and a new motor mount that lowers and angles the single threebladed propeller to match the round opening more accurately.

Grass lawn is particularly difficult to hover over due to air leaking unevenly around the model's skirt. Yet with the lawn cut low my Challenger wasn't too terrible! This run has me applying less then full throttle initially but around a minute into the effort the model's at 100% full power and staying there. This is my first time powering the model with a 6S4000mah lipo battery. At 614 grams this lipo is 55% heavier then the 2200 mah I previously used plus the model is now a bit nose heavy. Add in the friction of the grass surface, and my RC hovercraft was impressively responsive to steering inputs. Being quick to slow down, pivot, and change direction it now drove so easily!

Originally designed for a single glow engine of 0.09 to 0.15, there is room for only a 7 inch diameter prop, and it is heavily constructed out of plywood and spruce. Size wise it is about 20 inches wide by 25 inches long, not including triplerudders. For this restoration to active duty, I installed a Skywalker 60A ESC and use it with 6cell lipo batteries. Motor is Exceed RC 3025760KV. Propeller is now a Graupner 7x7x3 blade (reduced from 9 inch). Receiver is a OrangeRX with gyro defeated above 85% rudder, and the steering servo is a 12 gram metal gear that I was given.

Piloting is at Galveston Indiana on May 30, 2024.

Sincerely,
Curt

My R/C hovercraft model has a BLOG on RC groups:
https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showt...