Graupner / Ishimasa "Ducks" Hovercraft

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Hi model friends,

First time for me to upload a topic on this forum - I hope you'll like it.?

I bought an old Graupner / Ishimasa "Ducks" Hovercraft from ebay, that I always wanted to have as a kid. 

I remember - , that first time I saw this hovercraft was in a Graupner brochure from 1979. Later in 1984 it was still in their main catalogue - but it was already discontinued by that time.

Anyway - I took the old stickers off, sanded everything down, applied Styrofoam filler, painted it , found new stickers on ebay , put them on and clear coated it.

I also used Tamiya glitter spray, to get this sparkle effect in the sunlight.

Here is a picture before I refurbished it:

 

 

 

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This is how the canopy looked before :

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I repainted it :

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Here is a Video of it:

 

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[taffer]

I enjoyed the video and seeing another rare rc item, thanks for sharing!

[Mokei Kagaku]

Thanks for posting the pics and the video!

 

I bought this model new in 1982 during a holiday in Germany and kept it for about a year. At that time, with the 2 heavy 1200mAh Ni-Cd batteries, the performance was rather sluggish and runtime very short. So I sold it relatively soon after buying it. A couple of years ago, I bought a used one on eBay and started on the restoration. Just like you, I bought new stickers and used styrofoam filler on the complete hull. The filler caused some problems, so I put the model aside until just a few weeks ago and now hope to have it ready for next summer. Even with the 380 motors and old school propellers, performance should now be acceptable with modern batteries, but I may consider brushless motors and modern propellers later.

 

Btw, when I bought the model, my alternative choice was the Gunze Sangyo Supramar PT50 Hydrofoil, and being disappointed by the hovercraft, I regretted not buying the hydrofoil model instead, especially as it has become pretty rare in good used or new and unbuilt condition. Thanks to eBay, I found two NIB ones in recent years, just to realize that the model is so fragile that I probably wouldn't have had much fun with it as a teenager back in the early eighties. Look forward to building and running it now though!

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Today I tried it out indoors - that was fun !

 

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[FerrisBFW]

I had one back in the day.  I worked in a LHS so it was a demo unit.  I took it to a local RC sailing club lake and was not too popular :-)))