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Ashernoel wrote:

cheese wrote:

CMS AC wrote:Just wondering, is a potentiometer considered an integrated circuit? Is it a resistor?

Thanks.

Almost all potentiometers/rheostats are not considered ICs. If it is a dial adjustable pot, then it is most likely just a resistor with a wiper (which makes it not an IC).

Oh yea rheostats.. Why are they so expensive on digikey? The one on amazon that is 50W 5 ohm is like 15$, and then all the ones on digikey are wayyy higher iirc. Do you know why that is?

I just ordered a 12.5 W 2 ohm pot from digikey. It was $50....... hopefully the investment is worthit. The ohmite products are prob better than the Uxcell. My guess to why the Uxcell ones on amazon are so cheap is that they are 1.made in china 2. look like they've been sitting in some bomb factory for 30 years. I wouldn't order the ones on amazon because they will take way too long to get here (may). oh pots and rheostats...... why...

I need urgent help. I can't get my hovercraft to move forward . How do I reduce the friction with my skirt? I have a powerful lift motor, but I think maybe my skirt is not doing well. Should I make thousands of needle sized holes, or larger ones? Or should I use one giant hole as seen in many tutorials I found?

Ashernoel wrote: The track is just going to change the coefficient of friction. If you test on a track with a different coefficient of friction, which we probably all will because we can't know 100% how he made the track, what the rails were and all the stuff that effects it, you just have to know how to account for different coefficients of friction in your math and calculations. Its a physics event after all ..

It also makes it the most fair if we are kept in the dark about the track until we have to run it. Every team that either checks the forum or not will be on the exact same page

Exactly this ^. I couldn't have said it better.

petermai6655 wrote:I need urgent help. I can't get my hovercraft to move forward . How do I reduce the friction with my skirt? I have a powerful lift motor, but I think maybe my skirt is not doing well. Should I make thousands of needle sized holes, or larger ones? Or should I use one giant hole as seen in many tutorials I found?

It really depends on your specific design. A big part of SO is experimenting and learning via trying different things out.

petermai6655 wrote:I need urgent help. I can't get my hovercraft to move forward . How do I reduce the friction with my skirt? I have a powerful lift motor, but I think maybe my skirt is not doing well. Should I make thousands of needle sized holes, or larger ones? Or should I use one giant hole as seen in many tutorials I found?

If your skirt is easily replaceable, just try the two different skirts. If the tiny holes don't work, rip off the skirt and just make a new one and try the wall skirt. One thing I've learned is to just keep on trying new things. Two nights before state, my motor died. I had to stay home from school the next day but what do you know, I got second.

petermai6655 wrote:I need urgent help. I can't get my hovercraft to move forward . How do I reduce the friction with my skirt? I have a powerful lift motor, but I think maybe my skirt is not doing well. Should I make thousands of needle sized holes, or larger ones? Or should I use one giant hole as seen in many tutorials I found?

A big solution to this issue that I have not yet seen mentioned once on the forums: Center of gravity. Try shifting your weight to the front, back and center and you may see a significant improvement. It works for some designs, but I believe you may have all you mass in the back and your craft is fighting itself. On most designs, having the mass in the back causes the skirt to lift mostly in the front, which causes the craft to want to push backwards. When you have a strong forward force working against a strong backward force, you get no net movement. Let me know how that works.

I did balance my hovercraft. Are you saying that I should shift the weight towards on side?

petermai6655 wrote:I did balance my hovercraft. Are you saying that I should shift the weight towards on side?

I think he is saying that you should try shifting the center of mass towards the front of the hovercraft, that way the air cushion is helping the hovercraft go forward easier.

Okay. Thank you for the clarification.

Just a curious question, what are people using for their main base of their hovercrafts right now? I'm currently just using 5mm plywood with a hole I cut in it.