Schnapp Rolls

Frankly I could watch this model throw shapes 'til I’m stiff all over, and indeed that day-glo beauty on the right of the frame-grab is Austrian Gernot Bruckmann’s entry in the F3P World Championships back in 2023!

I’m probably teaching granny to suck eggs, but F3P stands for flying model/radio control/indoor aerobatics and these pirouettes are worth tuning into on the 'Tube.

Of most interest is the fact Gernot - as discussed over Zoom and schnapps - went for contra-rotating propellers to reduce adverse torque… as we've done with our maritime drone!

The next FAI event is the drone soccer championship (Ed. WTF?) set for Shanghai in November: what's wrong with people?

Watch This Space

On behalf of you all, I have requested a high-res version of a photograph of Spitfire-wing-designer Beverley Shenstone's grave.

I would of course have visited it myself, except it is in Cyprus and not Ormskirk.

In the past I have visited both Atlantic Record founder Ahmet Ertugun's grave on the Anatolian side of Istanbul, and Shanghai policeman E. W. Peters' grave whilst I worked there... and which I decorated with a magnolia blossom from a nearby tree.

Never let it be said that I do not go the extra mile for the deceased, even if I rarely step outside my door for the living!

I am however as sickened as you are at Google selectively targeting ads for online therapy at me during the course of my ongoing researches.

Trans Issues

It's a sensitive issue I know, but it's time we had the conversation: transponders.

Yesterday was something of a double whammy, because not only did we spot that shiny Class 69 locomotive at the docks but we got to see this too, didn't we Gromit?

It was there late morning, but gone when I returned later in the afternoon; in fact a screen-shot from vessel-finder's website reveals it left at 12:18 precisely.

So let's hear it for Benny Peterssen.

It was he that evolved the idea of information exchange for shipping, which would only become mandatory for merchant fleets after the 9/11 attacks. Based principally on satellites, AIS is invaluable to the UK: Central Park when it comes to brokerage and insurance.

The system is called AIS or Automatic Identification System, although aircraft have long used transponders to transmit flight information to radar heads. A 'radar-head' is a rotating dish for transmission or receipt of radio signals, and not a fan of these systems per se.

Back in the 1990s aircraft transponders (developed originally from IFF or Identification Friend or Foe) it became ADS-B, or the snappy Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast system that the likes of FlightRadar24 relies upon.

Interestingly naval ships in the UK are fitted with aircraft transponders, presumably because the helicopters and jets that they host have them fitted too, such that they are all singing shanties from the same hymn-sheet.

I only noticed this on the final approach over the sea to Barcelona, when the nav display in front of me 'flagged up' a contact that appeared to be at or around sea-level, and therefore not ~ as you would hope ~ an imminent collision risk.

Our adoptive ship meantimes is bound for Halifax in Canada, and currently off the southwest coast of Ireland.

God speed, me hearties!

(Ed. Pathetic, but the sad bastard once considered a career in the merchant navy.)

A Day at the Docks

Yesterday was an exciting one for despite being there to collect container-loads of scaffolding tubes (dull), I chanced to spot this (not)! It was there hauling wooden pellets that had crossed the Atlantic from North America, over to power stations on the other side of the UK. Readers of the blog will recall this is because (a) Margaret Thatcher hated the working class and coal-miners in particular and (b) because this ticks 'green' boxes in ways that reopening coal mines wouldn't, even if it were more efficient and provided more jobs.

A further disappointment beside it working for Drax ~ a fairly corrupt corporation as a cursory Google search attests ~ it is in fact only a 'tribute' locomotive. It has the nameplate and motif 'Falcon 2' on the side beside its shiny green livery is a nod to a prototype loco produced by the Brush Works and Maybach during the 1960s... and Brush's foundry itself was called the Falcon Works. Geddit?

Brush itself did not produce brushes, but produced much else and was named after a man with that name. It produced aircraft in WW2, afterward being sold to aircraft manufacturer Hawker Siddeley before eventually being taken over by Westinghouse in 2011: which decided to close the company and its illustrious works that can still be spotted should you be passing through Loughborough station.

It encapsulates British industry, today benefitting from 4% of investment sourced in the City of London whereas a century ago it was near 80%. Thus companies that once produced ground-breaking prototypes for land, sea or air are reduced to parts manufacturers or asset-stripped by private equity firms: fake trains, fake factories, fake people, fake content.

N.B. Colin is available for children's parties.

Sarco Baby

It's such a lovely autumnal day ~ sun shining, birds singing, not a breath of wind ~ that fresh from my gym class I say "Come on kids, let's go home and write an essay about suicide!".

But we examine all forms of transport on this blog, and we cannot overlook a dead elephant in the room in the shape of this luxurious means of travelling to the other side.

Furthermore like all of the greatest transport inventions it was inspired here in the UK by someone with 'locked in' syndrome, who could only blink in response to any stimulus. In presumably a series of blinks he contacted a man in Australia who has a history of designing suicide machines: Philip Nitschke's pod improves upon prior inventions like the Thanatron and Mercitron by not having a name that sounds like they're about to attack the Starship Enterprise.

But it's not all good news for people having an off day, as it costs £15,000 and takes a month to 3-D print and another to assemble... so don't go looking for one at IKEA any time soon!

But you know how I like a good sketch, and to my mind its stylish lines and 360-degree view of what you're about to miss are well worth a test-drive, so long as there's a happy ending.

Researching this on Google incidentally leaves you feeling suicidal even if you did not start out that way, as it keeps telling you to go away and have a cup of tea in place of dishing out the vital stats. Which it does for no other subject: I mean if you ask it the best way to cook an egg, it doesn't ask you if you won't consider sausages instead, does it?

To my mind however the Sarco's acceleration from life-to-death is not one that Elon Musk would settle for, and my thoughts turned recently to the Titan submarine. In this sarcophagus, its collapse went from 0-1500 m.p.h in two milliseconds... which puts even the latest Teslas to shame. It was painless, cremation was included, there was no time for boring speeches and it produced no environmental impact.

Way to go?

(Ed. It's also the product of a sick mind, and you can go straight to bed right now).

 

Short and Sweet

For me the highlight of the US presidential visit to the UK, as it may have been for you too, was spotting those high-aspect ratio wings that first bore my commercial flying career aloft... as something similar discharged the Red Devils paratroop team.

I figured it may have been the Short 330, but upon closer inspection was more than likely the Skyvan, which came with a tailgate from the get-go rather than offering it as an option.

The extended 360 offered a large cargo-door beside three dozen seats, which made it ideal for running freight at night after the last passenger had departed; although none of the variants offered an auxiliary power unit for warming things up prior to flights on a cold night.

Before the Channel Tunnel provided for fast trains to the continent, among the first tasks allotted me as a first officer (why 'first' when there were no others?) would be to fly newspapers to places such as Paris, so that ex-pats could enjoy those same news-sheets over croissant instead of cornflakes. Unlike them, prior start-up we had only the faint glow of cockpit dials to warm ourselves by... but we loved it, didn't we Gromit?

This would have been out of London Gatwick, although later I would do the same at Stansted where the papers were destined for Dusseldorf and the British Forces of the Rhine (BOAR). I feel now some satisfaction that our own boys ~ as they mostly were back then ~ were sent forth off the back of maiden (yeah, right) breasts that featured among our glorious tabloids at the time.

The demise of the aircraft was principally brought about by more fuel-efficient types like the ATR-42 and -72, and these like all airliners today made up with cost-savings for what they lacked in character.

But the -360 was the last gasp for that illustrious company founded by the Short brothers at the outset of aviation. Although they would surely have found school difficult with a name like that... much as the Ugly sisters did at my own school.

The book cover is one that will be imprinted on memory until my dying day in that weird way that certain images are formative for us as kids: and features a Skyvan. Ian Allan's publishing venture migrated from trains to aircraft, and using one such volume I 'spotted' the Boeing 707 G-ARWE which later caught fire in dramatic circs. My brother did not believe me, incidentally, like brothers rarely do.  

Wigan Peer

The UK has been known in the past, as now, for fielding talents in middle distance events. In my college days I'd lunch at the cafe in the sports complex at Sheffield, negotiating the same track that Seb Coe was using to train, he bent on glory and I on a cheese roll.

The BBC referred to 'training back in Manchester' afforded the two girls medalling today in Tokyo; although my interest was piqued by the football stadium appearing in the preamble. And indeed it turns out Keely Hodgkinson is training here in Wigan, as confirmed by my placement of that little orange character in Google Maps.

And isn't it me pacing Keely at far right? No it isn't, though it is trainer Jenny Meadows holding a clipboard. Jenny has been known to feature in the same Parkrun that I appeared in myself only yesterday... 27:25, and I only have to halve that in order to qualify for Team GB! 

Like me though what most sports commentators will take away from this is how the tree on the left side of the foot-bridge has grown since Google took its picture.

Well done!!!