World Hovercraft Championship week

Flight Journal, Oct 2002

Coming to Terre Haute, Indiana, on September 15 to 22, 2002, is the World Hovercraft Championships. What is a hovercraft?-airplane or boat? According to Richard Sleep, a Wisconsin pilot, hovercraft driver and charter-boat captain, it's a different animal altogether. Sleep says, "I've flown planes for years, and piloting a hovercraft is more like flying a helicopter than anything else because you've got to get over the hump. But it's more rewarding than a plane or boat, because it flies over anything-land, water, ice; you name it-and you're flying on air the whole time."

Check out this "different kind of animal" at World Hovercraft Week in September. The world's fastest hovercraft racers, manufacturers and rescue and military hovercraft organizations from more than 30 nations will converge on the U.S.'s Midwest. World Hovercraft will feature: world championship racing; the Hovercraft World Speed Record Challenge; the world's largest hovercraft cruise; the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute's 27th International Conference on Air Cushion Technology; the First World Symposium on Hovercraft Rescue and much more.

As Richard Sleep tells his fellow pilots, "Any pilot who flies fixed wing or rotor will get one big thrill. Nothing compares to this thing!"

For more information, visit the official website: www.whc2002.com/index-lowres.htm.