Driftbreaker is the new five-track EP from The Ramsgate Hovercraft, containing thirty five minutes of the band’s unique instrumental music. Head over to our Bandcamp page to listen online and download (name your price).
Tag Archives: hovercraft
Christopher Cockerell’s Kitchen
This ambient video was made as part of the promotional video for the band’s upcoming Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for pressing and printing Arcane Empire. Spot this footage in the background of the promo when the campaign is launched in the next few days. Christopher Cockerell was the inventor of the hovercraft, doing his early experimenting in his kitchen, giving the name for the track on Arcane Empire that the band used to make the soundtrack for the film.
Paper Model of SR.N4 Hovercraft
Bank holiday weekend is the perfect time to make a paper model of an SR.N4 hovercraft. Actually this is a prototype for a model we’d like to include with the new album, as long as it doesn’t push the cost up too much. We have acquired through eBay an original 1970’s paper model, presumably sold by HoverSpeed as a souvenir of travelling by hovercraft. This is supplied as two sheets of foolscap card pre-cut and scored and a sheet of instructions. We scanned these and adapted them to fit on a single 12″ square to go inside a record sleeve. The prototype was printed onto A4 inkjet photo paper which meant that it is rather smaller than the 12″ version. It also turns out that this type of paper is rather too soft for a small model. The original looks to be big enough and the card stiff enough that it can keep itself together with only tabs and slots but the prototype required strategic use of sticky tape and glue. Nevertheless the idea behind the original works quite well.
The original kit
The 12″ version
The completed prototype
Ramsgate International Hoverport
On a freezing, grey February morning, the derelict Ramsgate International Hoverport is particularly bleak and atmospheric. A salutary reminder of the hubris of the era of the white heat of technology, this massive concrete construction was thrust into what is now a National Nature Reserve, recognizing its importance for waders, wildfowl and sea shore flora. In the 1970’s mighty SR.N4 hovercraft roared into and out of the port, carrying cars and passengers to and from Calais. The terminal and other buildings have been removed but there seems to be no sign of any attempt to return the site to nature or any kind of remediation, although I understand that during the construction of the Thanet Wind Farm, Vattenfall paid for work to stop tar leeching into the sea from the hoverport.
The Ramsgate Hovercraft 