TRENTON, Ga. -- The whine of a starter, a couple of chugs from a Briggs & Stratton V-twin engine and Dade County High School's first hovercraft project roars to life in a parking lot behind the school.
Students Seth Schratter, Cody Stockman and Eric Wallin proudly demonstrate the results of a year-long project that they say will continue into next fall and beyond.
Seth and Cody, who both graduated this year, said students in the school's advanced engineering class started the hovercraft project as a three-dimensional model that developed into a full-scale, working vehicle.
"We started towards the end of last year, that's when we started making all the bottom pieces -- just the simple basics -- because we knew it was going to be (finished) at the end of the year," said Seth, who headed up the project and plans to pursue a career in engineering.
The hovercraft consists of a wooden platform, a 16-horsepower engine to power a single propeller that produces lift and thrust, a pair of rudders for steering, and a plastic skirt to surround the wooden deck, which creates the hovercraft's cushion of air, the boys said.
The hovercraft team also included students Trey Clark, Sherman Mathews, Brandon Whetzell, Zack Chambers, Devin Setser and Landon Cloud.
"We didn't get done with the hull, which is the cockpit that surrounds you when you sit in the actual craft," Seth said.
Eric, a junior at Dade High, said next year's engineering class will finish the first hovercraft in time to join Trenton's Christmas parade as a real "float," he said.
The team will simultaneously start on a second hovercraft with two engines -- "one for thrust and one for lift," Eric said, then they can race the two crafts.
The boys predicted the dual-engine set up will be a vast improvement over the current design -- smiling with anticipation.
Dade High advanced engineering teacher Susan Millican said the class cut its teeth on a hovercraft project that used a leaf blower motor to demonstrate the vehicle's concept.
"After that, the guys were really inspired, and so we decided that we're going to have to build a real one," Mrs. Millican said.
HOVERCRAFT HISTORYBritish inventor Sir Christopher Cockerell most often is credited for the invention of the modern hovercraft because of his "Momentum Curtain Theory" in 1953. He first demonstrated that a vehicle could ride on a cushion of air using two coffee cans and a hair dryer in 1955. He developed the concept that saw commercially built vehicles launched in the 1960s and 1970s.Source: http://jameshovercraft.co.uk
The next project probably will generate more interest in advanced engineering at the school, she said.
"I'll have Eric back and he'll be an integral part" of next year's new project, she said. "That's our goal, to finish this one, but at the same time, start on the dual-engine system."
The project would be impossible without help from sponsors such as Briggs and Stratton, Dr. M.C. Liedberg, who donated to the cause, and mentors Bill Darby and Tim Howard, who work with local medical tubing company Accellent, she said.
Mr. Darby and Mr. Howard helped Mrs. Millican with some of the finer points of hovercraft engineering, and other sponsors helped with parts and supplies, she said.
Combined with the students' enthusiasm, "that's what propelled it," she said.
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