Well, I have done a bit of improvements on the original design, adressing some problems that came up...
First I cut out two foam floats which fit nicely inside the skirts. This greatly improved floatation, and now I can shut off the lift fan and have the hovercraft function like an airboat incase something bad happens. That is also why I added the funnel-looking duct ring in the lift duct, as the water comes up through there but does not spill over... this drasticly reduces the amount of weight the craft has to support if it becomes waterlogged for some reason. It also aids in directing a bit more flow to the skirt, making it more firm. After these improvements, I ran it a bit in the tub and on the street and noticed an interesting phenomena... The rocks on the street had a sort of attraction to the lift fan, pinging around there and chipping the prop... not good! I installed a mesh on the bottom and changed the prop to a three-blader. Although it is a bit louder than the previous setup, the sound kind-of reminds me of a jet, which is always nice
After covering the basic improvements, I started with the cosmetics. I modified the top cockpit and added some more air vents. This about equals the area of the lift duct, barely affecting the handling. Now it is possible to run with the "top" on. An interesting side note - there seems to be a slight vent between the top of the lift duct and the top cockpit, creating an air current through the electronics compartment and out the rear mesh hump in the back. this effectively cools the ESC's by at least 10 degrees, although they are nowhere near hot anyways. After that was done, I rerouted the electronics and tidied them up. Lastly, to improve range, I CA'ed a flexible rubber tubing around the edge of the forward thrust duct, and routed the antenna through it. This really helped with range without messing with the outward appearance of the craft. I will do some more testing, this time on the snow this saturday (I hope!) and then I may add some other scale details. However, I may just leave it as simple as it is right now, as everything looks clean and simple.
videos may be coming if it snows!