(Update 11/11/2024 Sorry if a few image thumbnails and galleries are a bit buggy, I'm updating the coding at the moment - James)
Hovershow 2009
2009 marked the 50th anniversary of the hovercraft as we know it today. To mark this special occasion, the Hovercraft Museum at HMS Daedalus, Lee-On-Solent, made their annual Hovershow an even more special event. I took a trip to the hovershow to see what was going on, and amidst the hubbub, managed to get a few photographs of a few of the exhibits. If you have any photos from this event, and would like me to display them on this page too, please please get in touch!
AP1-88 Freedom 90, the hovercraft with the most service hours in the world, arrives from the Isle of Wight on a scheduled, deliberately diverted, normal Hovertravel trip to/from the island. In the foreground is the superstructure of the SRN6 Twin-Prop craft in which I was sitting at the time Freedom 90 arrived. A strange nostalgic feeling followed.
About a 10-minute short hover-around was afforded to a very lucky few at Hovershow 2009 on the Museum's SRN6 Twin Prop. Piloted by Hovertravel's own (??), and crewed by many SRN6 veterans, this short hop took us about a mile East of the Daedalus slipway, keeping relatively close to shore, but proving that this, the oldest operational hovercraft in the world, is still made of strong stuff some 40+ years on. SRN6 017 (the original Sure, later stretched, and converted to twin-propeller and outfitted for research purposes). This craft carries remnants of old research kit control panels.
(See SRN6 TwinProp for more information and a video)
