Lake Lurleen State Park has been chosen as the site of a national hovercraft rally, which will include a race between Alabama and Auburn. The race will be held on Saturday, March 16 and open to the public for a $3 entrance fee.

“One of the requirements was we had to have some sort of land to drive on,” Michael Bradshaw, a senior majoring in aerospace engineering, said. “Lake Lurleen was pretty much the only one we could find. And it has a beach, too.”

The race is in coordination with Hoverclub of America, which sponsors hovercraft races across the country.

Bradshaw and three other seniors majoring in aerospace engineering, along with a team of underclassmen, are building a hovercraft as part of their senior design project. They contacted HCOA about hosting a race in Alabama earlier in the fall. Auburn created a hovercraft team in 2003 and won second place overall at its first rally.

Kent Gano, racing director of HCOA, visited the Tuscaloosa team in October to discuss the possibility of holding a race in Alabama, something HCOA had never done before. Gano made a return trip earlier in November and spent the night at a Lake Lurleen camp site.

“People for national hovercraft races come from places as far away as Canada. So, what we do is have places where they can all camp,” Hisham Ali, one of the seniors working on the project, said. “It’ll be an event where people start arriving Friday, do the setup Friday afternoon, the event will be all day Saturday, takedown, then people like to drive back Sunday.”

Lake Lurleen made an attractive destination for a number of reasons. It had the body of water needed to race on, as well as a beach to use as a starting point. Ali said it’s dangerous to start hovercrafts on the water.

“Lake Lurleen had the open lake space,” Ali said. “Not only did it have the beach, but a hovercraft race has to start on land. You start on land, you make a circuit [on the water] and then you come back to that land.”

The track will be less than a mile long but include multiple laps. The current plan is to have a general race, followed by an Auburn-Alabama only race.

“This is the beginning of a possible region sports event,” Gano said after his first visit to Tuscaloosa. “This could hopefully turn into a nice little college-type competition every year.”

The race will be staffed by marine police and first responders for emergency situations. Some of the underclassmen on the hovercraft team will volunteer with tasks like flags, scorekeeping and timekeeping.

Construction on Alabama’s craft began in the fall. The team had parts for the hull donated by a hovercraft enthusiast from Alabama who saw their posts on the HCOA forum.

The team has completed selection of the engine section and is in the process of building one.

Their current challenge is creating a duct for the hovercraft fan, which generates the thrust for the craft and creates the air cushion on which the craft flies. Ali created a scale model of a fan using a 3D printer, then mounted it to an RC helicopter motor to simulate the thrust of an actual hovercraft. The team will then use software from the fan manufacturer and apply the simulation numbers to the real model.

Construction is scheduled to be completed in February so the craft can be tested before the March race.