Hovercraft B/C

[Ionizer]

Technically Lipos have longer and more consistent run times, so if 7.4v will work to power the motors enough, you might want to try them. But otherwise I'd get either a larger capacity Nimh or another battery and put them in parallel and that should give you consistent enough run time.

If you figure out someway to lower your current draw without weakening your fan it should increase how long the battery lasts, not only because the charge will be taken away slower, but because battery capacity is not actually just a constant number. Capacity varies with current draw, and the higher the current draw, the lower the capacity your battery will have. For example (from adafruit), a 1 Ah coin cell couldn't provide anywhere close to 1 amp for an hour, but it would have no problem with 1mA for 1000 hours. Getting a bigger battery is fine too. If you decide to manually hook up batteries in parallel, be careful, if one of them is more dead than the other it can cause problems.

ANy suggestions on how I could do that?

It's probably not very easy. I would just play around with your circuit removing and adding resistors/capacitors/inductors. Have you thought about using a capacitor to power the fan? I know the rules say that the only source of power can be the battery, but if the battery charges the capacitor, then it is the source of power, right? I know some great supercapacitors that are very small and range between 1 and 10 farads and could hold a huge amount of charge, but you would have to be very careful with them because capacitors with that large of a capacitance can be very dangerous.

[CMS AC]

Who's the event supervisor for Hovercraft at Nationals?

[windu34]

Who's the event supervisor for Hovercraft at Nationals?

That knowledge wont exactly help you because we already know what the track material will be (probably)

[CMS AC]

Wait what is it?

[cheese]

Wait what is it?

I think people have said that it will be most likely melamine surface with steel tracks.

[cheese]

Wait what is it?

I think people have said that it will be most likely melamine surface with steel tracks.

tracks are I think this:

[Zioly]

Wait what is it?

I think people have said that it will be most likely melamine surface with steel tracks.

For Div. C I believe. The tracks for Div. B are unknown, for the most part.

[LittyWap]

Wait what is it?

I think people have said that it will be most likely melamine surface with steel tracks.

tracks are I think this:

I think cheese is right on here. Every tournament I went to used those tracks. Doesn't matter, I suppose, so long as it's friction coefficient isn't very high.

[cheese]

I think people have said that it will be most likely melamine surface with steel tracks.

tracks are I think this:

I think cheese is right on here. Every tournament I went to used those tracks. Doesn't matter, I suppose, so long as it's friction coefficient isn't very high.

Yeah, at least for the side rails, the different frictions won't have a big impact on your run. The thing that matters, and actually makes a fairly big difference is the surface.

[windu34]

tracks are I think this:

I think cheese is right on here. Every tournament I went to used those tracks. Doesn't matter, I suppose, so long as it's friction coefficient isn't very high.

Yeah, at least for the side rails, the different frictions won't have a big impact on your run. The thing that matters, and actually makes a fairly big difference is the surface.

Have you asked chalker? I would think he could find out