At the tender age of 15, I decided it was time to tame the vast mud flats in front of our family home, and what better way to do this than to build a hovercraft of course!

My Dad suggested a model as I was quite into model boats at the time, I turned that idea down and went straight for the real thing. With not a clue about hovercrafts, but plenty of confidence that I could work that out, I set about on a 1.5 year mission to construct such a thing.

I ordered plans from Universal Hovercraft and set about acquiring the parts that I would need to make it happen. I was hugely supported by local companies who happily gave me huge discounts on high priced items. Support came from all directions, including my first ever trip in one—a year after construction began—from the legendary Rudy Heeman, since famous for building a ground effect vehicle from his hovercraft - see here.

Things were going really well until the failure of some support struts which went through the propellor at high speed and destroyed the back end. 6 weeks of hard work later and a lot of help from Pacific Hovercraft, and I was back in action.

After heading off to university in 2001, I didn't have much time to use or work on the hovercraft, so I decided to sell it in 2004. I have not heard anything about it since.