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Originally Posted by chadbang /img/forum/go_quote.gif
i dont see any of those rides lasting more than 10 seconds. its probably noisy as hell. i just dont get it. visit a beautiful serene lake and tear the place up so you can shakily hover 20 feet above its surface for 10 seconds? i sorta feel the same way about powerboats. the whole thing is just sorta obnoxious. now a real jetpack that would serenely let me fly over a beautiful landscape, that would be cool. at least hang gliding is silent and sort of beautiful.
I just watched the videos on the maker's website and realize that guy has very little control over that thing. I'd love to see the footage when he looses it. We used to have a toy called a wiggle worm - a summer yard toy that worked on water pressure. Did you ever turn the pressure up full on a thin hose and watch it flap about madly like an out of control snake? Imagine being strapped to the head of a wiggle worm....
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I don't know where you get the 10 seconds from. It seems to me that if you open the throttle to the right point, you could pretty much stay up there all day long. I mean, it's not like your lake or river or sea will run out of water. If it can lift you up, whey couldn't it keep you up?
The trick would be to learn how to control it for going straight to hover up as opposed to moving forward at speed. I'd imagine that body size and body control would have a lot to do with your success. But the device itself has plenty of power to lift you up/out, and you won't run out of water, so I'm not getting the 10 second thing unless you think it would be impossible to control.
I've watched the videos several times and it seems to me, especially in the first video, that he has plenty of control over it. I think they included the bit that shows him turning and going in a circle motion to demonstrate that aspect of it; not because he had lost control and had become a helpless UFO or leaf in the wind.
At the same time, I can appreciate what you're saying and suspect that it would take quite a bit of practice to get even reasonably good at it.
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Originally Posted by Zerius /img/forum/go_quote.gif
i want to see what that thing can do UNDERWATER
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Me too. I think that aspect of it could be a lot of fun, but probably most enjoyable at slower speeds. As a scuba diver, you never really move too quickly in the water. So I'm not sure what kind of visibility you would have with just a mask on if you opened up the throttle to deep dive. 75 kpm is quite fast!
I'm also curious about the boat/pump device that you drag behind. How well does it "dig in" such that you could be confident that it was making adequate surface contact when the lake (or sea in my case) gets a bit rougher. I'm sure they will have answers to all of these types of questions for a serious buyer (which I most likely will not be so I won't waste too much of their time if it's as costly as I'm expecting it to be).
