4wings.com Hovercraft development 47751-A Michigan ave., Port Isabel - 78578 - Texas, US

4wings.com

Hovercraft development
47751-A Michigan ave. , Port Isabel, TX, 78578








Hovercraft Donar 

 this file is for entertainment and educational purposes only



Donar originates from the German God Thôr - the Teutonic God of thunder; counterpart of Norse Thor - as well as a stylish hovercraft.

The hovercraft Donar was developed in the late 90's and had outstanding optical appearance combined with some new technology. 
Most hovercraft enthusiast were looking with a jealous eye on the craft which, unfortunately, disappeared soon after we got just a  glimpse of it.

Till early 2001, most of us did not know much about the Hovercraft DONAR  as it was developed by a  team of German-British Aircraft engineers and naval architects. 
Components were build by several subcontract companies all over Europe  like  Neuform-composites from where the variable pitch prop is coming  ( as well as you could see a short image of the craft) and molds for a serial production were stored in the beautiful Switzerland.. 

With spring 2001 Kurse International - ( an E-Bay affiliate company ) acted as an agent  to sell the whole Donar hovercraft design as well as the all related patents to this beautiful hovercraft named Donar.






The list of assets at offer was

  1. (1) All rights to manufacture and to commercialize the DONAR Hovercraft in any quantity 
  2. (2) All rights to sub-license the production to any licensee (i.e. Asia) 
  3. (3) All rights to commercialize its design (licensing to film-, computer-gaming-, toy -industry) 
  4. (4) All existing drawings, documentation, layer-plan of the composite structure, bill of  material etc. 
  5. (5) The license to use any valid patents in possession of the seller for the purpose of producing and commercializing the DONAR Hovercraft (no further royalties apply).  Which consited of  following patents which were applied for and partially granted in Germany, the United States  and some other countries of interest. 
Hovercraft Control-System, Germany P42 19 826.7 
Hovercraft Trim-System, Germany P42 19 828.31 
Brake and Control-Arrangement for Hovercraft P42 19 87.51 
Skirt-Trim-System for Hovercraft, P42 19 830.5 
  1. (6) The operational prototype DONAR 001 (at the time of auction  maintained in a Dutch Marina near Amsterdam), in as is condition. Which referred to a fully functional craft which was built for testing  purposes and, as such, was not yet fully sound insulated and had only four of six seats installed. 
  2. (7) The existing set of production molds (at that time  stored in Switzerland). This comprised more than 200 elements manufactured to highest quality standards. For the preparation of  the serial production, modification of the molds may be required and few additional molds  may be needed to facilitate the serial production. The buyer would have been  responsible for all costs to transport the molds from the warehouse in Switzerland to the buyer's location.) 
So now you might want to know what was the original asking price for this auction ....?

Before we mention that, please be informed that the Hovercraft Donar required a capital in excess of US $ 3 million according to the original file posted on e-bay where a copy is most likely available. 
But whatever the price was / is / might be  - it is a quite impressive craft as you can see from the following clip which was posted on youtube in






According to the original file most of this money went into the set  of production molds, the key to a successful production of DONAR. Substantial time and expertise have been invested in producing the hovercraft to the extraordinary precision standards as applied in the Aircraft industry. Their excellent quality ensured serial production in high numbers. Hence, only minor investment would have been necessary for the preparation of the serial production, for optimizing details of the design and arrangements of the shop-floor to optimize the production-process. 

The asking price was US $ 2.3 million which did not find a buyer within the short time frame of a standard e-bay auction.
Normally we should say case closed - another dream which went into ashes - but the Hovercraft Donar had some appealing design criterias which were at that time interesting for us at 4wings and a lot of other Hovercraft interested people. 


Hovercraft Donar had the following overall dimensions :
Data retrieved from several enthusiast sources and past e-bay posting
Length mm/ft.in 7630/25.0 
Width mm/ft.in. 3280/10.9
Height mm/ft.in 1820/5.12
Hover height mm/ft.in 400/1.4 
 Total weight kg/lbs  2150/4740
Empty Weight kg/lbs 1500/3306
Payload kg/lbs 650/1433 
Average fuel cons. gal.ph/ltr./h approx. 8/30
 max. range km/mls up to 700/440
Fuel capacity ltr/gal 250/66 
Engine : BMW M70, 12 cylinder ps/kW 300/220 
Controls: negative V-rudder hydr. 2
air-brake-flaps hydr. 2 
Thrust propeller: Diameter mm 1000 /  Number of blades 8 


The hovercraft Donar had the innovative feature of of a unique negative V rudder in the thrust air stream. These  V rudder in each thrust duct  of the craft allow for both banking and breaking actions. 
Another feature were two massive air breaks which could be deployed individually or in tandem to provide high speed turning and braking forces.
Variable pitch propellers in each of the two ducts allow flexible control of  forward, reverse and differential thrust.
Since it has all these outstanding features - where is it?

After the auction ended the traces of the craft disappeared and within a year a german web site (  http://www.air-cushion-craft.com/Donar/donar.html ) claimed to be the owner of the Hovercraft Donar, Wotan and Airrider series. Unfortunately the Airrider crafts were ended when Koeniger Maschienebau closed the production several years ago. .

We posted the  e-bay file on our server to provide the technical information for educational purpose only. 
Over the next two years the US and the EU investors tried to locate the where abouts of the Donar and even if we shared our information we could not find any legal owner of the craft till late 2003.

November 2003, we received an email from another gentleman claiming to be the owner of Donar and he wishes for us to delete the file from our site. We asked  him to edit the existing file. unfortunately, that was not acceptable for him as we are being threatened by his lawyer. 
We all  must agree that the hovercraft community needs to work with and not against each other.
As a result,  you see the modification of the content and no Donar pictures on this page. But there are still several images of this beautiful craft Donar on the web. If you are interested, you may search in hovercraft news groups.
We all have been watching the ashes of the Phoenix for the last three years.......perhaps we will finally see the Phoenix rising again.
Our apology and best wishes to all Donar fans.

Michael - 4wings.com
PS.:all the provided data is fact .... even if it may sound like fiction.
 





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ABS-Hovercraft
Appears as here is the right owner


ABS Hovercraft M10 video clip



Variable pitch propeller as used on the Donar