Is this answer to potholed roads in India! A personalized hovercraft, built by students from ACHARYA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Cheaper than Nano! Kudos to these brilliant engineers.

Report by Dhananjay :

A group of students Dhananjay ,Pradeep, Deepak, Rakesh.N, Nanda 8th sem of Mechanical Dept from ACHARYA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY have designed and fabricated a one seater HOVERCRAFT with the kind co-operation of our Principal Dr.G.P.Prabhukumar and under the guidance of Dr D.Madhu Former Head of the dept , R.Shadakshari, Nagaprasad.K.S. A hover craft is a amphibian vehicle which can run on both land and water. This craft has been built purely by the students .Basically it works with a cushion of air ejected from an annular ring beneath it without any contact with the land or water over which it travels.

The engine used is a Yezdi Roadking 2-stroke 250cc 16 bhp. The lift that is achieved is about 1ft from the ground.The added features would be a coat of resin reinforced by glass fibres throughout the body of the craft which gives the craft added strength and also makes its water proof and fire resistance as well. It took about 3 weeks round the clock work to complete this project but about 2 months to gather enough information and data to insure the path to be followed to complete the craft. The problems faced were initially they had a 2 blade propeller which broke as its tip went beyond the speed of sound. Since there were not many propeller manufacturers in India they had to get a new multi blade fan imported from U.S and had to assemble it ourselves using just a manual provided.

The most important to factor is its price. The entire project has worked out to be roughly about Rs 60,000 including the rework.