[philw Posts: 22 Status: Offline]

Thanks for the replies people, I'm not going to bother with it as it's obviously be crashed heavily and tbh a pretty poor repair. It wouldn't have cost much to make a new front cowl (if that's what you call it)  as they have the mould, so I'm thinking it must be a hard wack to the front end to be that out of shape and they've made the repair to fit the damage maybe? If it was a car then everyone would run a mile.

[Al Posts: 1008 Status: Offline WWW]

I’ve had two TS3’s. One was fitted with a BMW thrust engine and from memory a15hp briggs up front, very noisy up front. There should be some noise test videos of it on you tube. Search highland hovercraft. From memory noise was around 100db


My second TS3 had either a briggs 35 or kholer 40 for thrust and another briggs around 17 to 20 hp for lift. Again pretty noisy also there should be a video of me ploughing it at around 26 mph. Admittedly probably my fault, as the lift rpm was only about 2700 at the time.  I was playing around to see how it performed at different rpms.  Joe Milligan in Ireland bought that craft and as far as I know, hasn’t had any plough in issues


My biggest bug bear with this type of craft is the noise up front, but decent headphones sorts that and lack of usable storage space for spares, tools and spare fuel, but again with some thought, something could be sorted


I seem to remember when the coastal pro was launched a few years ago   Flying fish worked closely with a guy that done a lot of noise experiments on hovercraft to try and reduce fan noise..  I've have forgotten his name, but I think he has recently developed an electric hovercraft.  I think the coastal pro's are in the region of £40,000 new, so £10,000 isn't going to be to far off market value.   


The Flying Fish & British Hovercraft hovers tend to be more popular in the Hovercraft of great Britain hovercraft club, so maybe a good idea to also ask on there.  Someone will probably know this particular hover

[Ian Brooks Posts: 3598 Status: Offline]

Difficult to say really, no-one here has seen one of these operating so we don't know how well they work. They're loosely based on Bryan Whites TS3 design with the enclosed lift fan, which worked well enough but was very noisy in the cabin due to the front mounted engine and could plough in above about 22mph.

I'd agree that the front cowling looks repaired and I would ask myself why the engine had to be replaced. Could it have suffered a substantial impact? You'd need to check 

The front lift engine format is derived from racing craft, and puts the pilot onto the craft CofG which sounds very sensible. It does however reduce flexibility for load and passenger carrying. A better format puts the lift engine in the back, this requires the pilot position to move forward to counterbalance it, and in so doing opens a useable passenger or load space in the middle, right over the center of lift where it should be.

I don't know how the CP handles plough in, it has no skirt divider and uses a segment skirt, which could render it susceptible. Given that I suspect it has a 30 degree front hull panel (plough plane) the plough in could be violent if it happened. A better plough plane would be 15 degrees allowing for controlled plough in forces.

Anyway there's a few thoughts!

[philw Posts: 22 Status: Offline]

What's peoples thoughts on this? to me it looks like it's had a front impact as it doesn't seem symmetrical and badly repaired are they like this. thoughts please? It's on ebay if you want more pictures, up for 10k seems a bit ott?