CALIFORNIA DRONIN'
After the back-up design had been skewered like a Savoy sausage there was no choice but to revert to Plan A and submit a phone-box at a reduced scale. At that reduced scale however it occurred to me that whilst an adult might not be able to stand up in it, they might nonetheless be able to sit in it in the way that you might in those 1960s wicker chairs that hang from a tree. This still left the obvious disadvantage there was nowhere to put your legs with it sat at rest on the ground, but this contingency would be met by incorporating a child’s car-seat within and ‘modelling’ it with the benefit of random children.
In the event, quite literally, this proved to be quite a draw at the competition in California where during the public open day any number of kids wanted to sit inside and have their phot taken. I had known people in the UK that had witnessed groundbreaking prototypes like the Fairey Rotodyne in the flesh before cancellation by the government and I liked to think that in years to come old people would fondly recall ~ now that being teleported in phone-boxes had become a commonplace ~ how they had sat in the mother of all flying phone-boxes. As it happens, what is left of that airframe is to the best of my knowledge hanging from the rafters of a warehouse some place in Los Angeles (having narrowly avoided donation to the Hiller Museum as a result of crossed emails).
I had by this stage secured the good offices of a company on the Welsh Borders that manufacture custom-made industrial drones for any number of applications, having come across them in a newspaper article that I had digested on the flight-deck some years past. Its proprietor, whom we shall call Aled, retains a share in the company by virtue of the fact that at one stage he exchanged work for payment in kind the way that restaurant proprietors might have accepted paintings from Picasso in lieu. They had the benefit of decades of building sizeable multicopters for real-world applications, which was at once a blessing and a curse. In the way that to a hammer every problem looks like a nail, they were decidedly sceptical about any layout that had not previously proven to be tried-and-tested. This though is a problem withe all pioneering developments, in that the cost and energy involved in any number of iterations can destroy any chance of success.
In truth though the owner of the company was ambivalent from the outset, at once enthusiastic at the prospect of designing something wholly new and off-the-wall whilst at the same time being only too aware of the limitations of the technology and how it might lead to people dropping out of the sky labelled with his reputation. To a great extent then our progress depended much as might a gay carnival upon an organiser yet to come out of the closet himself. Nonetheless it was with these good offices that the first iteration successfully flew late in 2019 viz. phone-box with pair of quads stacked on top, as did the second in February of the following year. This was unsurprising however as it had been stripped of one of its quads for logistical reasons, leaving all else otherwise intact. In fact that if nothing else has shown us that what works with eight propellers will more than likely work with eight with few modifications.
In both cases however the final touches along with the flying was done by a contact whom we shall call Marvin, who had in fact been put onto us by the HeroX platform upon which the GoFly Challenge had been published, as someone looking for a team to join. As in “Programmer and RC hobbyist WLTM unhinged team with flying phone-box.” This would involve me in any number of extended journeys with trailer and prototype in tow, however, which looking back may well have been time better spent elsewhere. It is a truism however that prototype development is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent legwork in whichever field.
In the event Marvin would dip out at the last possible moment, causing us undue grief at the event itself which was the culmination of tens of thousands of pounds of investment and many hours of toil. He had, unlike Aled, no stake in the business and in due time we began to see the reason why, in so far as anyone without skin in the game can (as he did) simply hand in the keys and apologise. James Dyson himself has pointed out that trying to enthuse people for any new idea is never easy, and my own experience is that it attracts any number of people who subsequently drift off, sight unseen. I view this as understandable however in view of the slings and arrows involved in simply staying alive. At the end of the day what it comes down to is an absolute focus on the customer alone and a determination to build something that you yourself would be happy to stump up cash for as being something worthwhile: all else is froth.
With the prospect then of Marvin’s absence but with his flight under our belt in video form, I proceeded with the prototype literally in tow toward Southampton… as had the Titanic, it struck me, prior its fateful voyage. Here we would rendezvous with Peter Day, a friend and colleague of long standing who is the sort of person like the aforementioned James Dyson or Richard Branson (or indeed Warren Buffet) for whom death is the only form of retirement from work. Pete had built up a software company from the earliest days of the desktop computer, which after many decades he had sold on in order to finance ongoing ventures in the kit-build market beside plans to introduce American style hangar-homes into the UK and Europe. Pete had put sufficient into the company to purchase the necessary electrical equipment to add to the airframe, along with the means of getting to California therewith.
As things stood then, the company was classically divided according to the 80:20 rule with self retaining the bulk of shares and the remainder divide between Pete, Gwen and Aled. I have in the past auditioned for Dragon’s Den in the UK, and will do so on time with this most tantalising product that I intend to fly out of the elevator to pursue my pitch to the assembled investors. Early doors on a Saturday morning and Southampton still in darkness, the four of us headed to Heathrow to board a British Airways codeshare that involved a hop to Dublin in order top clear US Customs. With us on the trolley was effectively a bubble-wrapped helicopter that we hoped they would mistake for a wheelie-bin and two pairs of snow-skis.
Which they didn’t. This in turn meant that the others would advance to the departure lounge with the promise that I would meet them either there or, come hell or high water, California. Meanwhile I sat in a security office trying to convince the security staff that this really could be taken separately to the apron and loaded on the aircraft without it having to pass through a baggage conveyor system that it promised to block like a stray sock up the vacuum-cleaner. Helping in this was the fact I had worked six years myself at the same airport as a captain with British Midland Airlines (BMA) and knew the ropes accordingly… to which extent we all arrived safely seated on the connection to Dublin.
The second problem would occur however before we’d left the gate and as I gazed imploringly at the time on my watch. It was a windier day than usual, and I knew from bitter experience that this along with fog reduces the capacity of the UK’s busiest airport as it extends the spacing between the flow of arrivals. Accordingly we would miss the connection to San Fransisco and have to spend four or five hours in Ireland instead, awaiting a flight to New York instead. Yes… the one on the East coast instead of the West. Anyone perusing a globe might have noticed that the quickest way to the west coast of America from the UK is basically over the top, the reason being that going sideways instead across the Atlantic takes considerably longer… even without a further stopover.
Upshot to this was arriving nearer midnight than three in the afternoon, such that after hiring a people-carrier we arrived at NASA Ames in the bay area around two in the morning, when everyone including the gate guards had long since gone to sleep. Upshot was a breakfast at Denny’s instead, which is the sort of thing my eight year old will form memories of if nothing else. The other logistical problem would be tracing the various parts of the drone, which had travelled in three parts viz. quadcopter, phone-box and undercarriage. The latter, essentially a pair of black skids, had clearly got lost at JFK in the darkness of the cargo compartment and would arrive miraculously in time for the roll-out at the competition itself.
Fortunately it was whilst driving aimlessly around the NASA establishment afterward that we would be picked up by security, if only to prove that the system works. With the accommodation secured in what are effectively the student blocks, we had only a few hours sleep however before the team briefing. As a veteran of the University Air Squadron and having learned to fly at an RAF base, these bleary-eyed briefings after a fried breakfast intended to soak top the alcohol from the night before were no stranger to either myself or Pete. Taking place in the reception hall of the museum alongside the vast skeleton of an airship hangar since leased to Google, we were surrounded with echoes of the past ~ if I can be afforded at least one cliche ~ with which to inspire.
Of well over eight hundred teams to have entered the competition, less than two dozen had made the cut and of these we were among only a half dozen to have anything actually flying… or crashing, in our case, as things would turn out. But it was the being there, wasn’t it? In fact we were also the only team representing the UK, although there were students from Southampton’s university coincidentally, largely acting as casual observers. The reason for this, as it was for any number of teams from around the world, must have been the sheer difficulty of transporting a sizeable flying machine across vast distances. Beside those teams from the US with the luxury of arriving with trailers in tow (although this might involve drives of days duration in itself), there were teams from as far away as India or Japan ~ although given our diversion I figured we had come furthest of all. It was a measure of the money and motivation behind so many of the assembled teams however that one of them literally popped over to the Czech Republic to acquire a spare part in a hurry during the course of the four days.
The aim of the challenge at the outset, and as it continues at time of writing into 2022, was to expedite the development of personal electrical flight in the way that the X-Prize had done the same for the Musk, Bezos and Bransons of this world in venturing into space. This in turn had evolved from the sums put up by the likes of Lord Rothermere in the earliest days of aviation intended to encourage pioneering flights like those of a Louis Bleriot or else Alcock and Brown. And what a name for a swashbuckling pioneer, Alcock?
Such was the attraction of doing this among the great unwashed from around the world ~ with access to truly democratic material derived from the sort of phones available in its every corner ~ that even august aviation concerns like Boeing and Pratt and Witney had dug into their pockets with sponsorship. It was Woody Allen, since dropped from public acclaim for his dubious relations (although we’ve all got those) who said that the secret of success was simple: turn up. And equally Elon Musk, the great goddess Electra herself, is quoted as saying that the USA was the only place in the world for the pursuit of ventures such as these… And so if nothing else, we were in the mix.
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