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What Happened To Passenger Hovercraft? (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Although much has been written about hoverboards lately, hovercraft have largely faded from public imagination, BBC News reports. The Bond-esque 1960s sensation proved too noisy to roam inland rivers regularly, while too small to compete at sea with a new generation of conventional mega-ferries and high-speed car-carrying catamarans. Military aside, only a 10-minute English route and a Sino-Russian river border crossing keep hopes air-cushioned nowadays, while civilian operators wait for electric propulsion to become practical, aiming to reduce airplane-like noise levels and excessive fuel costs with new technology.
What happened to passenger hovercraft? That's obvious; the flexibility they provide (amphibious, require little infrastructure) obviously doesn't offset their inherent disadvantages (lack of carrying capacity, poor fuel efficiency, etc) except for military applications. What I want to know is what happened to the hydrofoil? I got to ride on one from H.K. to Macao at a very young age; I remember being mildly disturbed at the speeds we were traveling at... I've never heard a peep about them, however.
Airboats are still incredibly noisy.
I rode on one in Louisiana and IIRC it was basically a flat bottomed aluminum boat with a Chevy 454 V8 bolted to a stand in the boat with an actual airplane propeller attached. We all wore shooting muffs.
It was a pretty fun ride, though. On wide expanses of water, I'd swear it didn't turn per se, but sort of turned sideways until you'd built up enough thrust in the new direction to stop going the old direction. And it worked in water so shallow I couldn't believe it was floating by any definition. We sort of stopped in one shallow spot and I asked the guy "What happens if it gets stuck?" And he said "Well, we have to get out and push" which was fine, other than the 6 alligators I could count within about a 30 foot radius of the boat.
The whole experience had a touch of "Southern Comfort" (IMDB it) to it. We called a tourist place looking for a ride and the operator said it was out of season for him, but he said something like "Call Pierre Thibideaux, he'll probably take you out" and sure enough we drove to some remote spot on the bayou and this guy with a French accent was waiting with an airboat. Great guy, but of course having seen "Southern Comfort" I was a little worried where we might end up.
I did too - I loved it. And we took our car too. An hour after disembarking, the car stopped and wouldn't restart ... and then it did. And then it stopped. And started again.
Then later in the day, it recovered and all was well for the rest of the holiday. We figured the fuel tank had been shaken and stirred, and all the crap in there had decided to take a holiday down the fuel pipe to visit the engine...