[John Robertson Posts: 5136 Status: Offline WWW]

Ashwin,

To be honest, looking at your budget and plans, you would be far better off just making the disc type craft and fitting a simple leaf blower for lift and some thrust.  It will easily carry 150Kg on a smooth surface (I've built one and it does!) and will probably perform as well as any of the craft you have listed (apart from going onto water like the UH6F).

Your choice should be the disc-type craft or a "proper" hovercraft that will have some functionality - none of the craft you show are practical in any way.  To build a functional hovercraft your best (and lowest cost) option is to buy plans for a proven design.  Spending more money (than the disc-type) building something in-between that has no purpose seems pointless to me.

[John Robertson Posts: 5136 Status: Offline WWW]

1. Impossible to answer without some idea of the hull structure and shape.  As Tony says, 12mm ply is too heavy for any design.  Using 5mm foam is pointless - it's too thin to provide any composite strength (if you are using it that way) and too small a volume to give much useful flotation.

2. There are plenty of sources on skirt design on the web - check http://www.4wings.com for example.

3. Once more its impossible to provide an answer without more detail (craft weight, payload, cushion area, operational limits, etc).

I don't want to put you off but hovercraft look simple in theory but it's notoriously difficult to design one that works properly  (the difference between a working and non-working craft can be something very small - there is no such thing as an almost-working hovercraft

There are designs out there for simple hover craft - from the vacuum blower "disc" (http://amasci.com/amateur/hovercft.html) to the UH entry level craft (http://www.hovercraft.com/content/index.php?cPath=39&main_page=index) and others.