Billings Port of Rotterdam Hoverboat

I’ve managed to find an old (1980’s) Billing Boats Kit of a Hoverboat!

I love the uniqueness of this, its kinda half way between a hovercraft and a boat, using 2 air blowers in the bow it directs air downwards into a pocket underneath lifting the boat, then 2 conventional props provide the drive

I’ve not managed to find much online for these kits, they are extremely rare, someone did build one recently, but gave up on the poor blowers and used some foam underneath to provide the ‘lift/bouyancy’

Whilst I love the idea of owning one of these rare boats, and I do want to at least attempt the blowers to create the lift, the build is beyond my talents, so I have enlisted the help of Nick, after a few discussion on what phase one of the internals would look like Nick set about the build.

We chose MFA Torpedo 400 motors to provide the drive, and another to provide the downward blow, as you can see from the picture above the ‘blowers’ are encased and moulded to the hull with a band to drive them.

Initial discussions were all about keeping the weight down and battery’s would be 2 x 7.2NiMh arranged in such a way as to provide balance and ballast

Nicks build skills are awesome and the boat soon started to take shape

Considering the age of the Kit 34 years old, the plastic was in good condition, and the rubberised skirt was fixed to the hull using specialised glue

Next work started on the forward cabin, incredibly fiddly cutting out the shapes for the vents, these take in the air for the blowers to force down under the boat.

The build is complete, unfortunately initial bath tests showed a 7.2v NiMh wasn’t going to provide enough lift, and added to much weight, so we added a 3S Lipo much smaller and lighter and chucking out 11.1 volts, worked great got the lift! But…. The extra power pushed through the blowers caused some cracks in the 30 year old plastic, typically in a position that meant you couldn’t get at them to seal them, so a 2″ square hole was cut in the deck to give access, once resealed a hatch purchased from Macs mouldings (not necessarily to scale) nicely covers the hole.

So we have lift, now to purchase another lightweight lipo to power the drive, then some decent weather to lake test.

So managed to get it on the lake to test over Christmas, plenty of lift from the 3 cell lipo, and with another 3 cell driving the 2 x 400 motors plenty of go!, problem is the turning circle is akin to a 32 ton truck, the rudders are near to useless, so plan B (Was originally plan A anyway) is to install a mixer to assist the rudders in the turning, as always nothing goes exactly to plan and the rewiring has begun, watch this space for test run number 2.

Test 2! Action Electronics P94 mixer installed

Wow, spins on the spot, this is nearing completion, unfortunately with the 2 blowers running on 11.1v they do make a bit of a racket, so time to make a new pulley, mount the motor on some rubber, and well lubricate to minimise it, video to follow.