Running Out of Steam

Last weekend saw 'The Greatest Gathering' at Derby's rail works, recently voted by the public as the historic centre of locomotive building in the UK. It celebrated 200 years since the first passengers were drawn between Stockton and Darlington and featured any number of historic types, brought together for one weekend in the one place. Tickets sold out in hours and I wish I could have been there.

It could though be considered to be a celebration of the sale of UK assets to foreign shareholders, what is left of rail engineering having been sold long ago to a French multinational known for corruption to the same extent as it is for building railways.

The UK's most recent efforts ~ a high speed service between London and the North ~ failed enroute to Birmingham, and more recently the electrification of lines from London to Derby lost the will to live a little way north of Leicester. In China whilst all this goes on, they are trialling a service around twice the speed of our failed 'high speed' efforts... ironically using a technology attributed to Eric Laithwaite, who was born a stone's throw from here.

I've travelled on the maglev service between Pudong airport and Shanghai, and it is as close to travelling on a jet airliner as you can get whilst still moving over ground.

I've also ~ for the last time ~ used a train to get to Manchester Airport, seeing why we have a problem with rail transport in the UK. The service is over-priced and of dubious reliability, so people avoid it if at all possible. This leads to a doom spiral in which tax-payer revenue is effectively transferred to foreign shareholders.

We should close the railways and just transfer the cash, as with every other utility.

The train up top is a diesel multiple unit (DMU) of the sort we'd take to go shopping in Liverpool decades ago, and I'd still rather a ride in one of those than in the one below... they were so bad, they were good.

Focaccia (pron. 'for-catch-yer')

Here's why the Russians will win in Ukraine, nuclear war or no... a bread factory is producing drones instead: bacon bap to go, quad on the side?

The UK worse off than the US in this regard, as it's a service economy and a service economy is not geared for war... although it can deliver pizzas to the front line.

An exemplary case is Skyports Drone Services, which operates medical deliveries within Belgium from the southeast of England (good), using Swiss drones (not so).

To write shit like this requires a historical perspective, and there is none better than the Battle of Kursk. A place you've heard of, for Ukraine's recent incursion?

It's where 6,000 tanks locked horns and where that Trabant of tanks or T-34 was up against the likes of the Tiger, featuring input from Porsche and BMW... did it really need that sun-roof?

Lesson was anyone producing simple designs in greater number that were simple to operate and maintain, would ultimately prevail.

Sound familiar?

Apache Long-gone?

Although I have touted the idea of a self-launching boat that can hover itself betwixt land and sea, that's not where the current emphasis lies although I do continue as a paid-up member of the Vertical Flight Society.

Its most recent mag is genuinely sobering, reflecting as it does on the impact of the conflict in the Ukraine and the speed with which drones have supplanted practically all other mobile means of warfare: except artillery that can be relocated during the course of an advance.

WW1 effectively did for the cavalry, which would be replaced by mobile means in the shape of the tank and aircraft that dominated the largest battles during WW2.

Korea and Vietnam witnessed the utility of the helicopter gunship ~ an aerial tank ~ that secured victory in the Gulf War.

What Ukraine showed was tanks and helicopter gunships making impressive video footage on Day One, after which they were absent due less costly means of laying waste to them.

Offensive operations have also evolved from the miniaturisation of airframes, along with communication via miniature satellite and AI... which is capable of independent navigation and target acquisition through miniaturisation of chips largely stemming from smartphones.

What all this means in the US is that the DoD is taking a hatchet to programs that result in small numbers of units that are as expensive as they are sophisticated: and replacing them with drones on land, air and sea that can be manufactured in great number, in a short timeframe and at minimum cost in terms of cash and lives.

In a nutshell what the Defense Secretary requires is each element of the military ~ whether on land, sea or air ~ being capable of deploying drones in great number.

(Beside ditching tanks after a century or more of service... and phasing out gunships after some half of that.)

Meanwhile in Ukraine, a first-person-view version of WW1 continues unabated.

Sunday Sermon: ASBOS & ASDOS

A new feature for those like me who loathe life in the UK but are too old to do much about it... the Sunday Sermon!

Today I'd like to discuss challenges have faced two of our socialist-in-name-only governments of recent times, and how they intersect.

Friday I was wandering around Stubbylee Park in Bacup, the taste of my tea spoiled by learning how a pair of goths were stamped (mostly and actually) to death by our feral youth, one of whom released early for good behaviour: keep that in mind.

To combat such, privately-educated PM Tony Blair introduced ASBOs or anti-social behaviour orders... which rapidly became a badge of honour among youths, so as to encourage such behaviour further.

It's what happens with privately-educated politicians whose principal experience of the working class is being on the same side of the bench as the judge. Which is why their efforts to prevent 25,000 illegal immigrants from pitching up on these shores are viewed as larger laughable by their electorate.

Which brings us to ASDOS, or the preferred means of delivery used by narco-gangs wherein a larger vessel drops packages near the coast and a smaller carries it to the shore: At Sea Drop Offs. One of these was busted this week by a Border Force that boasts two dozen vessels to patrol the UK shoreline: as many as one per 800 miles using Ordnance Survey data.

There's more, for to avoid failure in last-mile deliveries, gangs are adopting drone technology in the form of narco-subs that are so successful as to be adopted by the US Marine Corps.

Because they don't risk human life, and are both cheap and low-observable. Sound familiar, like I might be developing something similar and wondering why I bother?

By way of peroration, let us consider one of the half-dozen men arrested this week following the aforesaid bust. Once a fisherman, he turned to smuggling when one UK government or another sold out the fishing industry along with all else. 

Cornwall is the most-favoured stretch of coastline for smugglers, has been for ages past and thus hosts one of the few successful revivals that we can enjoy as a family. As per generations of smugglers, the guy was effectively supplying a consumer demand for anything that might make life marginally less miserable in the UK viz. drugs and alcohol.

For this he received twenty-four years porridge. Stamp on a teenage girl's head til she's dead, and expect altogether less.

Welcome to the UK!

In tonight's episode of Poldark 2.0, Ross and Demelza are arraigned before a court in Exeter for their rendezvous with a narco-sub on the beach at Nampara... 

Do... D or A?

These things often pass unnoticed, except on YouTube, where the gist of the recent directive is that drones should be considered common inventory like bullets: cheap as chips, in other words.

The DoD has awoken to the fact that (a) China supplies 100% of the drones or parts used in Ukraine but (b) has denied use to US forces.

'botsanddrones.uk' summarises the state of play here, viewable using deep pockets.

Plot Twist

Eventually there's no better way to mount motors than directly on the cross-spars, and I look again at the simplest configuration viz. contra-rotating units at leading and trailing edges.

Then I stand back for a think, and looking at this my mind is filled with dread.

For literally from the get-go, aeroplanes have had issues with asymmetry. The first aircraft ~ the Wright Flyer ~ apparently needed one wing longer than the other to offset the weight of an engine fixed off-centre.

The Flyer though had two propellers, and worse was to come because designers the world over settled on a single propeller for its practicality. This led to an immediate problem, because the airframe wanted to rotate the opposite way as a reaction to the torque. Worse than that, the airscrew added 'swirl' to its efflux which produced unwanted rotation when it struck the tail.

One of the most successful Italian biplanes of WW1 therefore featured one wing that was longer than the other, principally to offset torque. Whilst people actually appear to prefer an element of asymmetry in faces, though, they don't like it in means of transport. The solution to this was to leave the wings an identical length, but rig one at a different angle of attack to the other.

When I look at the set-up in the picture, I therefore see rocks ahead. Should the foremost propeller run clockwise as viewed from the rear, irrespective of torque effect it will rotate the deck in the same direction by force of efflux. The rearmost propeller meanwhile has to run anti-clockwise, which also produces a clockwise bias by way of torque reaction instead.

What this means in the worst case is that the boat may be inclined to pursue a right hand turn that cannot be corrected by differential thrust alone, and which may take an inordinate amount of testing to resolve.

We're back then at Plan A as regards configuration for testing viz. coaxial motors on a common beam, which I've decided to christen the 'power bank'.

While nothing in life is wasted, I offer this afternoon as evidence to the contrary.

Screwed

I've limited resources in terms of time, energy and enthusiasm (beside cash) and so the choice of how to rig the frame for testing on water is not to be pooh-poohed... I leave pooh-poohing to the water utilities here in the UK.

There is ever a balance in prototyping between ambition and overreach, as often as not the simpler solutions proving the better pathway to follow in order to provide for a proof-of-concept; the concept here being that many boats are better off T-shaped.

There are six reasons for mounting contra-rotating props at the rear of the boat:

(a)    as with torpedoes it is the best guarantee of proceeding in a straight line

(b)    it eliminates the need for a separate rudder surface

(c)    it counterbalances the nose-down pitch that we've seen at rest in water

(d)    it allows in due time for a seat up front in potential crewed versions

(e)    it is easily vectored in order to adjust trim on the plane

(f)    I love the smell of turbines in the morning

I shall be using two means of fixing the motors, each of which appeared among the annals here somewhere or other. The forward-facing motor will be bolted directly to the cross-bar, a better name for which I've yet to come up with and which may yet go to Survey Monkey (with the prize being a monkey).

The rear-facing is more of a push-fit, which suits a pusher-propeller: to the rear of the motor I have glued a wardrobe support-bracket, and this slips over a wooden 'boss' or dowel where it is secured with oodles of adhesive and a grub-screw.

Note to self: never fly in an airliner whose jet-engines are fitted by these means.

It's beginning to look not so much a lot like Christmas, as something fairly fast?