How much propulsion would i need to move my 300 pound hovercraft?

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How much propulsion would i need to move my 300 pound hovercraft?
 
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This is rather a "how long is a piece of string" question but as it takes very little force to move a hovercraft once it is air born I would go for about a 1KW fan.
 
Bryce said:
How much propulsion would i need to move my 300 pound hovercraft?
How fast does one want to travel, or accelerate.

Is one asking about the hovering, or the lateral travel?
 
Google found this page which has details of several 150kg/330lbs racing hovercraft...

http://hovercraft.herts.ac.uk/craft.html

Seems they use a 40-60 BHP engine with 25% used for lift and 75% used for thrust. So looks like about 30-40bhp for thrust would make it reasonably quick.
 
syhprum said:
This is rather a "how long is a piece of string" question but as it takes very little force to move a hovercraft once it is air born I would go for about a 1KW fan.

Unless it has a large frontal area, and you are traveling into a headwind.

I've spent 20+ years boating up and down my river. Reality trumps textbook all the time.

It's easy to design a hovercraft to travel across a glass smooth lake, with no wind. It's totally another thing to design one to traverse 6 foot swells, with a 30 mph headwind.

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Bryce, solve for Fd.