How to Make a Hovercraft Skirt with a Trash Bag

I was asked a few times how I made the skirt on my hovercraft so here I will tell you how to make your own. They are pretty easy to make once you know how. If you have seen the video of my hovercraft you know that it was very bouncy. That was with one of the first skirts I made. I will be showing you how to make a much better one that is more stable and worked on my pool.

First off, I made the hovercraft over a year ago. It has since been forgotten until now. It no longer works, mainly due to a glitch causing it to turn off when it was over my pool, but I will show you what remains.

First off you will want to cut a piece of the trash bag into a piece as big as the hover craft with a 1" to 1 1/2" border around the sides. You will have to make a few skirts to find what works best for you. Then you will need to tape that piece onto the bottom of the hovercraft. Make sure you leave some slack for it to inflate. Don't leave too much or it could role over. I taped the skirt on with packing tape, duck tape would probably be better.


Now you need to cut small holes into the skirt for the air to escape. Cutting too many may make the skirt not inflate, but too many and you won't get enough lift. You can stop here if you really want, but you will have a much better hovercraft if you do the next step. To make it much more stable and to prevent the skirt from dragging on the ground you should add a bolt in the center of the skirt to make it like a donut when it inflates. To do this simply cut a very small hole in the center of the skirt and on the cardboard and put the bolt though it. I added a small washer as it seemed to help.


Now you are done making the skirt. This part has no real effect on the performance but it looks cooler. I made a cardboard cover. The main reason I made this is because it was to protect it from water that would splatter up onto it when it was in my pool. To make it water resistant I put duck tape over the entire outside and painted it black. I later splattered some silver on it for added effect.


The cardboard was a little flimsy so I added reinforcing BBQ squires.