Do not worry if there is a strange machine floating across Thompson Lake, it is probably a hovercraft.
David Allabastro said Hoverclub has made hovercrafts at SIU for 14 years. Allabastro, staff advisor for the club, oversees the construction of hovercrafts.
Allabastro started the club with Gary Butson, a professor in Civil Engineering, as a recruiting tool for high school students. Since they have competed in national competitions and turned the club into a registered student organization.
Butson said the beginning stages were difficult and the club had to learn from its mistakes. He said he taught the basics to newcomers and challenged the experienced eningeering students.
“We wanted them to build a hovercraft that met certain requirements and would qualify us for entry-level racing in the Hoverclub of America,” he said.
According to Allabastro, competitions feature various categories, such as piloting, design and technical innovation. He said SIU has won technical innovation two years in a row and took third place last year at nationals.
“A hovercraft competition is pretty much like an auto competition in the 1920s,” he said. “We will compete with anybody that has a machine. We will see people from pretty much all over the country and in some cases all over the globe.”
SIU participates in the entry-level category of competitions, Allabastro said, which limits them to a 15 horsepower motor. He said their machines can get up to 35 miles an hour on water and 25 miles an hour on land, but some machines at competitions can reach up to 110 miles an hour.
Because the machines are hard to operate, Allabastro said it is difficult keeping pilots.
“A hovercraft flies like a motorcycle on ice. Just because you point it in any given direction doesn’t mean it’s going to go there,” he said. “It takes skill and seat time, just like an airplane, to be able to pilot it properly.”
Allabastro said Hoverclub has been a great recruiting tool. He said they visit high schools, grade schools and community colleges.
“In some cases we’ll go into a grade school,” he said. “We’ll just go in and say, ‘we’re from SIU, isn’t that neat?’ And everyone goes out and watches the hovercrafts.”
David Williams, another staff advisor for Hoverclub, said the hovercraft draws a lot of interest from high school students.
“What’s common to everybody is it goes fast and it makes a lot of noise, and kids like that,” he said. “I’m not sure what the hovercraft’s mystery is, but everybody loves it.”
Allabastro said he believes the club has recruited between 2,000 and 3,000 students to SIU over its tenure.
“The idea of the hovercraft is just getting people interested, in not necessarily the college of engineering but to get people interested in engineering period,” he said.
Mandara Savage, chairman of the SIU Department of Technology, said the club is important for engineering students to get hands-on experience.
“Students actually get down and they cut the metal, they cut the wood, they glue the wood, you know they do all of those things related to building a hovercraft,” he said. “For them it’s a very worthwhile effort because they can see the actual vehicles from beginning to end.”
Williams said the club gives hands-on experience that will help students in the job market.
“If you come to a university and just get a four-year degree, you’ve cut yourself short of the experiences you could’ve had,” he said. “The type of experience you get when you work with something like this, you can’t put a dollar value on it.”
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