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Comment by jawns | Hacker News Reader

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jawns·

It was a regular advertisement in the 1980s and 1990s in Boys' Life magazine, published by the Boy Scouts of America.

Picture of the ad:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/7jrpbu/this_hove...

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I built one of these with my dad (the version with only a single skirt) in the sixth grade - it was awesome! Unfortunately, the skirt we created wasn't quite even around and couldn't hold enough pressure for me to ride it, but that didn't stop my younger sister from riding.

Building this started a several years long obsession with hovercrafts. Multiple science fair projects, digging on the internet, etc. My family ended up taking a trip to Europe and I was able to ride across the channel from Calais to Dover on a giant hovercraft. Literally a dream come true at the time. Too bad I was also 14 and super embarrassed by my parents' attempts to take pictures, etc. ;-)

That doesn't "fly" in the sense of climbing above a thin layer of air created by blowing air into a chamber under you. The picture in the ad hints that 3 1-foot diameter pads would provide sufficient "lift"; seems unlikely. Depends on how much pressure the source can provide but you need to lift not just the rider but the vehicle on just a few psi pressure. That class of vehicle is known as a hovercraft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hovercraft

This has literally solved one of the mysteries of my childhood. Now I understand, it wasn’t lying, I just misunderstood.

I still have the old plans to build one of these that I ordered from an advertisement in boys life when I was 12.

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