The thrust duct was built on an 1/8" plywood cylinder, on 3'
plywood disks, mounted to
a 1" shaft, on some pillow block bearings on my workbench.
I turned it with a 16" homemade pulley, using a furnace motor.
The foam is 3/4 " with slots cut in it to make the bend, glued on one
layer at a time
with epoxy. There are three layers.
I have video footage (not on this site) of me lathing this with a chisel,
and the foam is flying everywhere,
messy but fun.
Here is the finished duct mounted on the work bench. I made a couple
of handles out
of some lengths of garden house, to facilitate easier removal and handling
of the duct.
The shaft is from the scrap yard, ($8.00) and to fasten it to the shaft,
I made to litlle brackets out of tin,
and clamped them to a pice of rubber inner tube around the shaft, and
used a hose clamp to tighten it.
I used the hub and H bushing for my prop to fasten my home
made pulley to the shaft.
Two lift fans. The one on the bottom was the first one I made for my
UH-6F. I fashioned it
out of a solid piece of 2 x 6, using the plans I bought for
the Pegasus from
R.Q. Riley. It actually worked okay, but then I got the prop
templates
from Universal Hovercraft, and I made the four blade lift fan, which
seemed much smoother.
I made two lift fans at the same time. One is a 24-14, and the
other a 24-16.
My thinking is that when I get a bigger motor for my UH-6F, I'll
use the
24-16. and I'll transfer the 24-14 to the UH-10T2
I love this epoxy by West Systems. Get it with the pumps. The pumps
are calibrated for
1 pump of each, and away you go. I use these little rollers that painters
use for touch ups,
they're cheap, and you just throw them out after.
On the window sill, is my 36" thrust prop, waiting to be glassed and
balanced.
Here is a shot of the back showing the supports, with the engine roughly
in place. The duct
has had a piece cut off the bottom (carefully), and is ready to be
glued in place
with lots of 'Great Stuff'. One of my rudders is also sitting there.
From the front. I got this motor from a snow blower, with only about
3 hours of use on it.
Of course as soon as we took it apart, we got a major dump of snow,..
sure was a nice snow blower.
Comments or questions
jproppe@telusplanet.net