August and September have continued to be busy months with hovercraft trials, deliveries and major announcements.
The second GH12000, for Japan was turned around and loaded for delivery in very quick time. Meanwhile on 12th September Griffon Hoverwork announced their new air cushion landing craft – the Wyvern. This craft is designed for payload around 50 tonnes rather than the US Navy SSC at 74 tonnes. More on this below.
UMOE Mandal have delivered the first of their new Wavecraft Commander 27 for operation to wind farms operated by Ørsted in the UK North Sea. It has been reported that this craft has exceeded 50 knots in calm conditions and at that speed uses just 17 litres of fuel per nautical mile, quite an achievement. Normal service speed will be lower at around 42 knots. This allows efficient access to the wind farms being built by Ørsted that are increasingly distant from shore.
The US Navy have delivered SSC craft 105 to 107 to the east coast Unit Four base so these craft are now in active service and Textron series production continues. Meanwhile the South Korea Navy also announced delivery of two of their new LCAC craft into service. Details of both these events are below.
When researching for these News Notes your Technical Secretary regularly finds new items placed on YouTube. It is good the people do record events and upload them. This month a couple of items are presented, including videos by an enthusiast in Alberta who earlier built a Universal Hovercraft design, and found a GRP hull which he has completed as a project. The strangest item (to Techsec anyway) was his turning of a wooden vee belt drive pulley!
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