Buying hovercraft? Before purchasing a hovercraft you must take time and read this hovercraft facts?

Here are some tips that might help you at your decision about your first hovercraft purchase. All information about hovercraft sales at one place.

Here are 4 important things you need to know about hovercrafts before purchase a hovercraft:

1. Hovercraft flotation

2. Hump speed time

3. Yes, hovercraft can climb...

4. Weight factor

5. Test a hovercraft by yourself - demo ride possibility

1. Hovercraft flotation

Hovercraft flotation is very important factor if you plan to ride hovercraft on open waters or rapids, or if you plan to use hovercraft as fishing boat, or hunting airboat in swamp. Flotation means if you turn the hovercraft engine off, hovercraft is impossible to sink under water level no mater what, even if water brakes into a cockpit. Our hovercrafts have special hovercraft plenum chamber design, that completely separates buoyancy material from the air canal, dirt, etc. Plenum chamber is installed all around the hovercraft  bottom, so it gives maximum and optimum buoyancy force to the hovercraft. Our hovercrafts are impossible to sink under water, no matter what.

Our 2 person hovercrafts MAD and BUFO have standard flotation of about 150 liters of water resistant special two component polyurethane, what guaranties you that hovercraft will not sink no matter what. You can fill it completely with water and hovercraft will still stay on top of the watter.

Beside standard flotation we can add to hovercraft extra buoyancy that will not effect the hovercraft performance, up to 150 liter extra if needed, possible more. So complete airboat buoyancy can be more than 300 liters of floating material, that does not effect the final weight and does not effect the final performance of a hovercraft.

2. Hovercraft hump speed time

Firstly... What is hovercraft hump speed time?

Hump speed is time, that is  necessary to beat the hump barrier. With simple words, if we make hovercraft  stop on the water, hovercraft start floating like a boat. If we want to ride again, we must beat the hump barrier first, than hovercraft can start hovering above the water level again. So hovercraft hump speed is time that is necessary to get out of the water and start hovering again.

Our hovercrafts are able to beat the hump in 3-5 seconds, what is the fastest time of all commercial and leisure hovercrafts on market, except the racing hovercrafts, that have about same hump speed time. Want a video prove? Take a look a demonstration video clips of our BUFO hovercraft beating the hump with one and with two adult persons on board of boat:

Most manufacturers hide information about hump speed time, because most of commercial leisure hovercrafts on market need from 10 - 25 seconds time to beat hump barrier, and get out of water - sometimes they even do not make it, what looks very ugly.

Reason for bad hump speed time is simple

• old hovercraft air canal designs

• too heavy hovercrafts

• low power-to-weight ratio

• bad disposition of hovercraft balance

Just to mention that our hovercrafts are able also to pull an adult water skier out of a water with 50

HP engine. Pulling the water-skier out of a water is not so simple thing for a hovercrafts, since hovercrafts are air powered airboats, that have no grip with area where they hover.

We are very

proud about our hovercraft performance since MAD and BUFO hovercrafts are able to do what no other commercial or leisure hovercrafts can... Beating hump in only 3 seconds and that is not all... MAD and BUFO  can pull out of water an adult water skier with out any problem, and still come out of water faster than other hovercrafts with no water skier tied on an airboat. Check video.

>>> Ask your self what is wrong with other commercial hovercrafts you find on market, they can't compare MAD and BUFO performance on water..., they can not beat hump so fast as MAD or BUFO, they can not pull the water skier,.... Why there is no hump or water skiing demonstration video of other hovercrafts on web?...  think about that!

What about climbing... Can hovercrafts climb?

3. Yes, hovercraft can climb...

well... MAD and BUFO can, but we are not sure about other hovercrafts, witch they can not :)

Climbing capability of hovercraft mostly depends on hovercraft weight to power ratio,...

When we talk about power, we talk about thrust from the duct measured in KG and not about engine with more or less horse powers.

With stronger engine you get more power, that is correct, but you also get larger weight what means low performance of hovercraft at the end, and such a hovercraft again CAN NOT climb. It is the same with waterskiing and with a hump beating.

>>> Ask your self what is wrong with other commercial hovercrafts you find on market, that are able only to glide on smooth and flat surface and not able to climb.... and again - can you find video demonstration on web of climbing capability of other hovercrafts...?

4. Weight factor

This part is easy to learn... light and strong construction hovercrafts are good hovercrafts.

Two person hovercraft is considered to be light when complete with engine, weigh of hovercraft is between 130 - 150 kg, depends on other applications installed on hovercraft.

Three person hovercraft is considered to be light when complete with engine, weights from 160 - 190 kg, depends on other applications installed on hovercraft.

Strong and light hovercraft construction is considered a composite sandwich reinforced hovercraft.

With heavier hovercraft as described, you will be only able to glide over flat and smooth surface - forget grass taller as 20 cm, forget up and down ride on smaller hills, forget high performance, forget hovercraft jumps that can be 10 - 15 meters long,... in that case hovercraft is more slider as hovercraft, because it can only slide on flat area with mud or cut grass, ice or water,...  and that is all it can do. Real hovercraft is able to do much more than that...

Heavy hovercrafts are also hard to maneuver, that is the reason they need so called reverse thrust system, to correct the mistake of being to heavy and too hard to operate and bad disposition of balance.

Question - how fast can move such a heavy hovercraft? In specification of other manufacturers is written over 45mph... but... did you ever see any of hovercraft going so fast? Answer is NO and you never will, because they are not able to do speed like that or they are simply to dangerous at higher speeds.

Only with COMPOSITE TECHNOLOGY light and strong and hull can be manufactured. Polyethylene, wood, or aluminum are not good materials for hovercraft hulls, only allows the cheap and fast manufacture and in case of selling greater profits to hovercraft manufacturers.

Click on image below to see how our hull components are manufactured, and imagine how much work and steps does it take to manufacture a quality hull.

100 pictures of BUFO hovercraft construction process - step by step - constructing amphibian airboat for World Hovercraft Champion Ship 2008

Here is a sample for easier understanding... polyethylene hull is manufactured in 1 hour... and BUFO hull in polyethylene would weight around 180 -200 kg and would be manufactured in one hour... in composite technology weights only 65 kg and is much stronger, but needs around 7 days of hard work to manufacture it!!! Final product is day and night, off course composite hull is day, the polyethylene hovercraft hull is night, what you can see if you compare the final performance of polyethylene or composite hovercraft construction. The only advantage of polyethylene hovercraft hulls are for manufacturers, because they can manufacture hovercraft in very short time, and have great profits, but hovercrafts made like that are far away from composite type of a hovercraft, specially in performance on land and water.

5. Demo ride before hovercraft purchase

... most important thing before your first hovercraft purchase is to test at least 3 different hovercrafts from 3 different hovercraft manufacturers...

When you decide to do the testing of different hovercrafts, do not forget about us, we have demo hovercraft always ready for you to try.