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| Page 8 |
| Hoversite 2003 |
| August 2004 |
| Summer's Here! |
| On the beach at Goose Pond. The craft now has a windshield and New Hampshire boat registration numbers. In the background (besides the catamaran waterbike) is my brother's AirCreation trike on floats. In the foreground is our 85-year-old mother waiting for a ride! |
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| On August 21st, we loaded up on the newly-painted trailer and headed off to the Connecticut River Hover-In in Windsor, CT -- about 2 hours south of Hanover. At the Hover-In, inspite of threatening weather, we found about 15 hovercraft (a preponderance of StarCruisers) but also several home-built UH models including a 13-PT with a recently upgraded (25HP) thrust engine. |
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| Four Star Cruisers, a Neoteric and a very green UH-13P line up ready to head for the open water of the CT River. |
| This was my first experience running over sand bars - we don't have those on Goose Pond. Great fun! My son was busy with football practice, so I brought along my 79-year-old father-in-law (shown standing to the left of Hover-In organizer, John Rich in the photo to the left). In spite of the spray from a rough river (we had 15-20 kt winds) he was a great sport and enjoyed his first-ever hover ride. Unlike the UH-10 in the foreground, our craft needed no repairs or tune-ups and performed flawlessly. |
| Below, that's me zooming downstream on the Connecticut. Although I had no trouble keeping up with the UH-13PT (whose GPS indicated 35 mph) it was not ideal conditions for speed runs because of the squirrelly winds. |
| A very-nicely finished UH-13PT heads down the ramp for the CT River. This is Finn Arnold and his son from Massachusetts. |