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Hoovercraft

Roadboat
  (+3, -1)
(+3, -1)
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The hoovercraft is a planing boat for use on the road.

At slow speeds, it travels on wheels. On the open highway, though, the sluices and throttle are opened. The sluices disgorge a vast amount of water from the mid- point of the craft. The rear portion of the hull planes on this cushion of water, like any regular speedboat. Aft of the hull, a 250hp vacuum cleaner retrieves the water, directing it through a filter unit and back to the mid-ship sluice gates. The overall effect is of a speedboat scudding along the motorway on its own personal cushion of water.

No longer need you huddle like the millions of your fellow travellers, seated behind a wheel in a glass coccoon. In your hoovercraft, you can stand manfully in the cockpit, hand on the tiller, a peaked cap snugly on your head, and a pipe clamped firmly between your teeth.

As a bonus, the road is left spotlessly clean.

MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2008

Vax V028M http://www.vax.co.u...6-pack-AAA-solution
Indoor version of Hoovercraft. [MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2008]

Just needs suck. http://www.freepate....com/US4274591.html
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 16 2008]

[link]






       Yeah, but we'll float the company nevertheless.
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2008
  

       I should have explained more clearly for the hard of thinking. The collected rubbish is burned, yielding both additional power and sufficient water to keep the tanks topped up.   

       Wet-weather handling is superb, by the way.
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2008
  

       [UB] perhaps you are not familiar with the long-established English recreational indoor vehicle known as the Vax V028M?
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2008
  

       Well, give yourselves a little time.
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2008
  

       //it travels on wheels//
No, this just will not do. At slow speeds, it should be a sailboat. Have a collapsible ring on the perimeter (an above-ground pool with the road surface forming the bottom), filled with water. As water flows downward, recycle it with the pumps, just enough to leave a cushion of water. Raise the mast, sail on.
  

       ... wheels?! Hoover must be sucking in his grave.
Amos Kito, Mar 15 2008
  

       The sailboat mode is only available at an extra cost. The problem is that fully- bouyant craft requires a good depth of water under all of its hull, whereas a planing craft needs only a shallow pool at the rear. You have to consider the practicalities when you're dealing with things like this.
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2008
  

       You're right. Sorry, I've been impractical all day.
Amos Kito, Mar 15 2008
  

       It should be more specific and convoluted.   

       Filtering out the return water with a screen, and returning it to the road is what happpens when the screen is full. It returns, not in the pumped water (for pumping the super dirty water would be unwise), but after it is produced in a cup next to the driver's seat, whereby he/she proceeds to take the rubble and throw it overboard.   

       Over time, the roads are gonna be so clean, you'll have to pollute just to keep things interesting.
daseva, Mar 15 2008
  

       this idea needs an annotation to bring it to life in these depressing times.
Sparkyplugclean, Nov 06 2009
  

       Everyone would be busy looking at their reflections in the mirror clean roads.
Ah Supp, Oct 02 2011
  

       It could be self-financing, recovering palladium from the road debris.
TolpuddleSartre, Oct 03 2011
  

       That, [TolpuddleSartre], is within a Planck of being a brilliant idea.
MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 03 2011
  
      
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