Happy New Year! To keep you all updated on what’s happening with Hoverstream right now, I’ll tell you everything I can about what we’ve been doing for the past 6 months.
I’d like to start this article with an update on the ‘preorder/order’ question so many have been calling about. Late 2022 ended up being too early to start allowing preorders for the craft. I apologize for having to delay, we expect preordering to be open this spring. When we’re ready, an announcement will be made detailing pricing, estimated wait time, colors, how to get your preorder in, and more. Thank you so much for your patience, I look forward to seeing customers enjoy the result of all this labor!
Overall progress on the craft
Next, we’re about 85% done with the production molds. Right now, the last major mold work that needs finalized is the thrust duct. The major design work is complete; the current focus is more on tweaking details and optimizing manufacturability. In many ways, designing hovercraft parts that are efficient to produce is far more difficult than just creating something that performs well.
One design aspect of the Evo that I take pride in is our new rudder setup. They’re angled in a way that forces more roll in the craft when turning, giving smoother turns, and a cool, unique look to the back of the craft.
Materials
Since our last update, we’ve spent a huge amount of time experimenting with the materials used to make the craft. We will make a video showing some of this work. The structure varies by location and engineering requirements. The bulk of our basic panels are made from a honeycomb core and unique thin fiberglass fabric.
Compared to the Coastal Pro 2’s mat fiberglass body material, our honeycomb structure makes the fully assembled product significantly lighter, and while I can’t yet give a final number for how much lighter it is, there’s a big difference. It’s also immensely stronger, more resistant to bending (stiffer), takes far more force to snap, and fails in a far more predictable way than the hand laid mat fiberglass material on the CP2. The result is a hovercraft that is much tougher and more resilient to daily hard use than hovercraft of the past.
Here’s someone bending both of the materials, 2 layers of MAT vs. a sample of our most basic honeycomb cored fiberglass:
Jason Kuehn
President and founder, Hoverstream LLC.
Stay tuned for more news. Pre-orders will open Q2 2023, full production will start Q3 2023.
