Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[admin]

The other day I put up a page showing an old SRN Hovercraft that did the Calais-Ramsgate run, til being pensioned off in 2000. Wish I'd have a ride on one of those monsters now, has anyone here been on one?

Rick

[buzzy bee]

I know it isn't the same thing but I think there is an arrive and drive hovercraft centre at rednall, near to the karting. I am pretty sure they give you some brief instructions and send you out to ride over land, water and mud in your little hovercraft. Not sure how much it costs but I have allways fancied finding out more about it!

Cheers

Dave

[Old-Nail]

I went on the Hoverlloyd Ramsagate to Calais service in the mid 70's.

If I remember rightly there were three hovercraft's there, Swift, Sure, and St. Christopher, I went over to France on Swift and came back on St. Christopher.
The interior had comfy blue seats with an arrangement similar to a wide aircraft, looking forward to the crossing I plumped for a window seat only to be disappointed - as the craft raised from the sand and went on the water the curtain generated so much spray vision was nil!

[Brian M]

From 1976 - 1980 I was a Director of a Company with offices in London and Maastricht in Holland, and for the first two years travelled over there every two or three weeks. I have always loved driving and so rather than flying, my favourite route was Ramsgate/Calais by Hoverspeed and through France/Belgium to Maastricht. First of all in a company Austin Princess 2200HLS then in a Ford Granada 2.8GL.

From memory I think the crossing was only 30-40 minutes as opposed to 2.5 hours on a ferry. As Old-Nail says it was not a trip for sight-seeing, as soon as you set off the world disappeared in a cloud of spray.

Just like Eurotunnel today, regardless of your booking you were put on the next available crossing if there was any room. Cars boarded from the back and exited from the front. On one occasion, I arrived at Calais with less than five minutes before sailing and was the very last car on the Hovercraft, at Ramsgate the cars at the front were a bit slow off loading and I was directed to reverse down the ramp at the back, quickly nipped round the Hovercraft and was the first car out of the Hoverport. I made the whole trip in record time that day!

The vibrations on a rough sea were unbelievable. It was a common sight at either end of a rough crossing for cars coming off the Hovercraft to be trailing exhausts, losing number plates etc! The AA and RAC were permanent visitors!

Thanks for bringing back some 30 year old memories.

[Uncle Joe]

This is not the same thing either, but I used to be a frequent traveller on the hovercraft that used to be run by SAS between Malmö City Sweden (the worlds only airport with no landing strip!) and Denmarks Kastrup airport. Noisy things, but at least they had free booze, as they were classed as an aircraft. They were replaced by a Hydrofoil, which was even noisier! But still had the booze! (hic!)

[Standardsteve]

I think that's my main memory of a trip to France as a child was the noise and the fact that we couldn't see a thing out the windows because of the spray, but boy when your ten believe me it don't get no better than that. my only other memory was just before the end of service I was on a sea fishing trip in poor weather of Pegwell bay in Kent and the skipper of the boat telling us to look in shore as we would see the Hovercraft come out of Ramsgate and pass inshore of us as it hugged the coast looking for a window in the weather before heading to France what a majestic sight that was with it passing no more than a mile from us with spray being thrown up almost hiding it from sight at times. like Concord, so much potential but so little will at the top to develop it.

[admin]

Hi Standard, wow sounds amazing - I've always been a big fan of thunderous machines, like Concorde on take-off with reheat

Most fun aircraft noise I heard was 3 or 4 years ago, I popped into Bruntingthorpe airfield where they keep, and occasionally ground run, some of their heavy metal (Victor, Canberras etc). I blagged my way in (it wasn't a public day) and wandered over to take some pics of my car next to the Comet and the 747 they had. I could see something going on in the distance, so ambled over, keeping well out of the way. They were ground running a Lightning, and testing the reheat - the noise and spectacle was awesome, especially when the afterburner kicked in and the thing was rocking around on the brakes - top stuff

This year should see their Vulcan taking to the air again, should be fun!

Would liked to have seen a big hovercraft close up too when running

Rick

[Standardsteve]

I saw the victor at Elvington near York last year do a high speed run down the runway that was cool but I would like to have seen the Lightning run up on reheat "White diamond's" (you know what I mean) oh and living in Norfolk you would often see the Victor tankers climbing with a full load (no clean exhaust there) as they headed out to sea on a mission coming from RAF Marham. As I'm only about ten miles from RAF Coltishall (now sadly just closed) I would often spend an day up there seeing what would turn up. Once saw three canberra's do touch and go's for about half an hour plus two American marked C130 doing the same oh and loads of Jaguars.

[xkjaguar]

go to lee-on-the-solent the former HMS Daedalus is a hovercraft museum
ill take some snaps next week and post them
can't do it before as i'm off to Barcelona for a dirty weekend with the wife





she doesn't know yet!!

[xkjaguar]

took me some time to get around to it but here they are
the hovercraft graveyard (museum!)
the 2 SRN6's are Princess Margaret and Princess Anne
the others I have no idea

http://picasaweb.google.com/xkjaguar/Hovercraft

[buzzy bee]

Hi xkjaguar

Great snaps, they look amazingly large, wonder what power unit they have/had!

Cheers

Dave

[Uncle Joe]

Power Unit answer: General Electric T58 turboshafts built under licence, cant remember how many though... 4 maybe?

UJ

[Brian M]

Found these two old pics taken in the late 70's at Ramsgate

[xkjaguar]

i remember building the airfix kit of on many years ago
my dad bought it--i wanted the saturn 5 but he said this was more interesting and had more woking parts
all i remember is having to paint about 200 seats before i could glue them in




by the way i bought the saturn5 about a week later

[UKdave2002]

When I was at school we built a single seater hovercraft as a technology project.

A simple thing ;the main body being 6 inch thick slab of polystyrene sandwiched between sheets of plywood, the skirt was sewn together by girls in a needlework class (by machine) and had loads of pockets in order that you didn’t loose all the lift if one section of the skirt was knocked. It had 2 chain saw engines driving 2 fans in ducts, one for the lift and the other for drive, the “fans” were bought in but we made the ducts out of fibreglass.

It did drive (fly!) but as I remember was not too controllable! We were only allowed to use it in the middle the school field with no one else near by!

Don’t know what happened to it, if anyone else was at Kingsway High School, Chester in the 80’s they might know!

Did have some photo’s, will see if I can dig them out.

Dave