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Crazy idea for an Airboat? how about an "AirToon"

F

FP1201

Well-known member
This idea came to me when I was a kid some thirty plus years ago....here goes: How about mounting a big a$$ engine with an appropriate sized prop onto a pontoon boat.
When I was a kid we had a pontoon boat without a motor (somebody stole it) that we kept on Lk. Shipp. couple of us could sit on the ends of each pontoon and paddle it fairly easily and it was made of steel and literally weightd a ton. The newer one are aluminum and unless they are really 'decked out' they aren't that heavy. (OK heavier than an Airboat, but also much larger).
Has anyone ever seen or thought about such a critter? It certainly would be one of a kind, but even the most popular things started out that way.
I dubbed it: The "AirToon". :wink:
 
you've obviously been hittin the egg nog pretty hard....BUT, I think Diamondback made a few tunnell hulls that I heard ran pretty good??
 
i have a friend that moved to Alabama.he had to sell his water pumper air boat.he told me the lake were to deep to run blow boats around where he was moving.he said he could buy pontoon shells"pontoons plus the deck" for a dime a dozen.he wanted to buy one and put a 350 gearbox on it.but that is the last thing i have heard of it.
 
I have seen a pictute of a houseboat/pontoon boat that had a airboat system on it, don't know how well it worked and probably wasn't good to frog off of.
 
I've thought about that too, but I couldn't really come up with much of a reason for it.

might be cool though. No reason why you couldn't do it
 
you would have to rebuild the whole frame the cross frames are designed to handle weight straight down on the deck and not that HP pushing it , plus there would be a low lift with the pontoons over a 7' wide air boat hull and if one was on land and the other in water you would slide around something awfully. tunnels are great for outboards but again I see no benefit to a air boat setup as you actual lose lift when you set down.

Now that I have been so negative :( anything can be built if someone has the idea and wants to make it work :D
 
Not at all crazy... About 10 years ago an older gentleman who was having trouble with his balance but wanted to continue to bowfish took a 6 cylinder farm tractor engine with the transmission and put it on his pontoon boat . Well it was not correctly figured for weight -- drag -- horsepower -- and prop size so it did go forward but only in water deep enough to float the boat.. The one tournament he brought it to for a test run he got stuck in the channel going out to the river-- So their he sat for the tournament and he did win big fish for the shoot. He said he would stay their so he would not get into trouble out away from the boat ramp and he would have help loading in the morning. As far as I know he never improved his idea but parked it. The engine was only around 100hp .
But with the right set up why could it not work???
 
I hadn't thought of changing the frameing to handle the push, but that wouldn't be a really big problem.
Kinda wonder how well or easily one could be skidded around...again it would depend on the same variables that face all AB designes: design, weight, and power.
I could see taking a 16 footish flat decked, open boat (sort of a floating dock) and rigging it similar to a catamaran, with say a SBC and a paddle prop. There are lots of places you wouldn't necessairly want to run it, but some where it could be useful.
Up here when the lakes and rivers freeze over, it could be used to transport materials, or put a yard arm & winch on the deck for retrieving sunken snowmobiles or ???
Fishing the shallows and flats would be a breeze, not to mention all the walk around room...I suppose it's all in what you intend to do with it, ever see one of those huge twin engine jobs that Diamondback (I think) made?
They were for oil drilling exploration.
The boat in the Protach link is small, but exactly what I had in mind (less the inner pontoons). http://www.protatch.com/Pontoon Boats.htm
At least I'm not completely crazy, but still a little bit "redneck" :wink:
Back to the eggnog. [/url]
 
FP maybe you should think about putting drop down wheels on the boat as I am wondering if it would turn even with Polymer on the tubes??
I can just see you now coming to that hill you all talk about and down go the wheels and you pass everyone... (cool thought)
 
Theres a guy in Punta Gorda Fl thah has one ,I think it was about 18ft and has a 220 GPU on it ,said he runs the salt flats and does ok but fishing is all it was used for .
Wider Flat Fiberglass pontoons might be a better choice over the round tubes .
 
There were a few of them on Lake Istokpoga years ago when the hydrilla was too thick to run outboards. Don't see them on the lake anymore but I did see one in Lake Placid about a month ago.
 
There was a guy that lived over on turtle st. in Hatchineha Estates that had one in the canal behind his house. You could see it from the main road just before you entered the port. It had a big rotary aircraft engine on it. I never saw it leave that spot, though. I always wondered what it would handle like on the water. It could still be sitting there for all I know.
 
I like this thread a lot ..... thinking 'outside the box' is fun.

The pontoons wouldn't have any speed, but man, talk about a place to set up a red neck condo and grill a few burgers :) . You might even be able to turn the exhaust pipes down into each pontoon and leave a port on the rear of each one to let the exhaust gasses out ...... built-in mufflers. :lol:

It could be a fun boat.

olf
 
There's a place for big ol' slow boats. I like 'em.

A couple of friends and I are thinking about nailing up an old barge with a shanty on it and a big screened porch on the bow, and DC lighting from a couple of storage batteries and a couple of solar chargers on the roof. Something like maybe 12'x40', and with an oil drum cooker hanging off the back. We don't even plan to put an engine on it ..... then it wouldn't even have to be registered.

If we wanted to move it, we'd just hook somebody's boat to it and tow it.

olf
 
OLF you are working over time on this one...... But if you go to http://www.hovercraft.com That is Universal Hovercraft then scroll down to the UH20C craft it is a pontoon hover for 10 or more people... But I do have to disagree with you on the pontoons being slow because if the too were designed right ??? round in the front and tapering to a larger flat toon in the rear it should get up on plane ???? what a ride that would be just keeping it flat in the water. But IF it did work --- less drag =more speed. just don't let one cut in deeper than the other you could end up doing cartwheels. I like your party barg idea too. But on the back put a pushing fender?? so that you can push It with your airboat rather than toeing it. I can just see it now 2 airboats up front with toe straps and one behind pushing and don't forget the signalman on top of the barge directing the other three with a cold one in his hand -----
 
Ron, I like the way you think :lol: . That reminded me of an 11 houseboat 'convoy' I saw one time up on Center Hill Lake in TN. Eleven houseboats lashed themselves together, sheer rail to sheer rail and came up the lake that way. The man in the center boat, a big triple decker, was the pilot and he directed the whole show by radio. The two boats on either end did the steering (power forward and reverse) and all of the other boats just stayed in forward at a fast idle.

It was quite a sight to see this monstrosity coming, with folks walking back and forth from one boat to the next, one party to the next, drinkin' adult beverages, sampling food, and watchin' the Vols football game on TV.

Another thing we've thought about for the old Shack is to leave something like a 4'X4' hole in the floor somewhere indoors with a railing around it. ...... you could fish when it was pourin' rain or even drop a crab pot in it. Most of the time it would be anchored though. You could either tie up to it, or use a little dinghy on a rope and pulley to get back and forth from the dock. The 'happy hour' light would always be lit, however.

Pontoons could do the same thing ..... anchor off and let other boats tie up.

olf
 
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