This Fifth International Conference by The Hovercraft Society includes another important group of technical papers, and by locating at The Hovercraft Museum enabled delegates to visit the exhibits including key craft forming part of the development history in the UK, most notably an SR.N4 cross channel hovercraft.
Fifteen papers and presentations were given over the two-day conference. Two presentations on scale modelling of hovercraft were not accompanied by paper records. The Royal Marines presentation also did not include an attached paper. The documentation we include here therefore comprises twelve technical papers.
The subjects related to craft development range from development of the Griffon 8000TD that has been deployed in numbers by both the Indian Coastguard, and the Saudi Arabian Border Guard, through the RNLI Griffon 450, the Catamaran air cavity craft developed by SESEU, the Hoverwing WIG developed by Fischer Flugmechanik to the PACSAT SES. In addition, there are papers such as that on skirt materials performance by HCL and on the wavemaking and drag of SES compared to catamarans.
The conference was rounded out by Chris Fitzgerald of Neoteric Hovercraft. He called for people in the industry to come together on a global basis to enable more effective marketing of the technology. He had already established an internet site www.worldhovercraft.org and encouraged people to register there and support development. In the intervening 19 years the site has become dormant though still has some information. In 2022 we at The Hovercraft Society are working towards similar objectives!
The Programme and Papers guide page can be found here. It includes links to each paper presented.
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