Pilot's home-made hovercraft stuns Darwin crowds

Take-off: Greenberger went from 'show off to coolest bloke in the world'. Photo / Youtube

Is it a boat? Is it a plane?

'No, it's a home-made hovercraft', James Greenberger told bemused spectators in Darwin.

Onlookers were amazed as the craft cruised metres above water across Fannie Bay.

"The things you see in Darwin," said bemused local resident Pierce Hanson, who recorded the event.

Home-made hovercraft: Greenberger on his first test run. Photo/ Facebook

"I thought it was just a cool hovercraft with some additional attachments until the owner accelerated and took off," Hanson told the Daily Mail.

However, the pilot of the craft was no stranger to flying.

The builder of the craft Greenberger, 30, explained that he is a pilot for a Darwin-based airline.

In a blog for the project he kept running on the website hovercrafter.com, he wrote that he began as a frustrated hovercraft engineer two decades ago.

'The whole intention of building this is to make it fly!' Photo / Youtube

"My liking to hovercraft's started when I was about 12, I found plans for a hovercraft called the Pegasus."

Unfortunately, he explained that his dad forbade him from building the craft, which he describes as essentially "a round plywood disk with a lawnmower engine for lift."

15 years and many YouTube videos later, Greenberger began work on his first hovercraft in earnest.

He built a kit UH-10F hovercraft in 2017, but this latest creation was which he began work on 10 months ago was far more ambitious.

"The whole intention of building this is to make it fly!"

The maiden test flight over Fannie Bay with an audience of stunned locals.

"Everyone thought 'what a show off' until his Hovercraft started flying. He went from show off to coolest bloke in the world in seconds," wrote one spectator to Instagram.

Control panel: Greenberger has been a hovercraft obsessional since he was 12. Photo / Facebook

"We couldn't believe our eyes! Magic moments," wrote another.

We're not sure if Travel will be making a flight check from an aircraft like this any time soon, but it is an impressive home-built contraption.