Skyweaver

Always thought this would be a good idea, but thinking and doing are two different things altogether as a casual place at my own life will testify. But the DARPA heavy-lift challenge has thrown up any number of beautiful innovations and this amongst them.

What has been encouraging too is that invariably innovators have drawn upon the possibilities of electrical motors or jet-turbines, eschewing IC engines altogether so far as I can see; even the relatively compact rotary engines that are produced here and do power aerial drones worldwide requiring range or endurance.

And that is probably the key, not much of either being required for this challenge, instead a requirement to move heavy stuff a short distance across what would in reality be a battlefield of sorts.

This one though flies a couple of aircraft in circles so as to put the line connecting them under tension, whereupon they both climb in order to raise the payload that is fixed to the vertical line to the ground. Thereafter they are co-ordinated so they can move in one direction or another.

It is all software driven and way beyond my pay grade, so well done!

Eh Aye...

There's considerable debate out there as to whether these are human, robotic or AI; all I know is that I'd like one for Christmas.

Livestream*

We go now live, now that funding has been withdrawn from the radio telescope at Jodrell Bank, to Astronomer Royal Colin Hilton's back garden for an epic view of the 65% eclipse that won't be coming this way again until 1990. Direct views of the sun are NASA's ball-park really, and so here we have bounced an image of the sun off a pair of concave make-up mirrors and onto a black-glass set of bathroom scales. Finally we view all of this through a pair of sunglasses from my Chinese neighbour, who now (as she has long suspected) thinks I'm a trannie.

The Astronomer Royal comments: 'Basically this was shit, but an excuse for tinnies in the back garden. I was in London for the 1999 full Monty: birds shut up, multiple shadows of leaves, cappuccino, nutty Danish pastry. Basically if it's not advertised as 95% or more, it's like a cunt in a BMW on high beam with a headlight out.'

* Ed. Of golden bats-piss, sadly.

Istanbullish

Back when I 'served' you all at London's Heathrow airport it was the busiest in the world, but after I left it went into severe decline and so has since been overtaken as Europe's busiest by Istanbul (above). It might change with a third runway, although as this was first considered eighty years ago your breath should not be held. We do have the consolation IST was designed by London architects... ours being a service economy.

Actually LHR once had a third runway, the crosswind 23 that I used on windier days altogether. Without an ILS, it required a sidestep that would put the fear of God into most airline pilots ~ as it did me.

Heathrow as it looked when I was still there

Inflated Expectations

Elsewhere in these pages there's a post on the remarkable rise of mega-inflatable, which the UK government dismisses as a 'small boats' problem whereas it should be celebrated as a 'big boats' sensation. As children we too had an inflatable, although a canoe seating just two or three. Later in my time as a captain we would be tasked in a swimming pool with climbing into those inflatable slides that can be detached from the doors of airliners after a ditching.

But this stuff is on a whole different scale. The prior post pointed out that inflatables of this kind are wholly unique, and kindly supplied by Mr Alibaba and his friends for record attempts across the English Channel ~ a route that has inspired any number of historic crossings in the past from Bleriot to that Frenchman with his jet-powered platform!

Such is the pace of development ~ on a par with DARPA's heavy-lift challenge in the US ~ that my recent post described inflatables capable of seating some 130. Now therefore in just a short time we've (not me personally) been able to nearly double that number!

Were I a vlogger I would buy one to mount a challenge, along with a select group of followers... but I'm not, so I won't.

We shall however wait in anticipation of an entry in the forthcoming annual, which to my mind is a bit too 'Dorling Kindersley' for my own tastes nowadays. Back when I was a child (shut-up, Luther) it looked like a telephone directory and would include records we were more interested in, like the world's longest human penis.

Ed. The author has a good friend who arrived on an inflatable... or used to.

The Dove from Above

During a social run of an evening my attention was caught by something you'd not expect to be sat in a barn amongst straw and chickens, and arrangements had to be made to discover more. It is being restored by one aircraft engineer whose personal circs allow sufficient time ~ though not enough ~ for labours of love like this. The paintwork is brush-work in enamel, incidentally, just like a big Airfix kit.

The aircraft operated in the RAF between 1948 and 1984 as a transport for VIPs and will have borne any number of ministers besides members of the Royal family in its time... hence the stars on the trailing-edge nose-gear. Unusually too, braking was by pneumatics on the main-gear only and thus steering would be done in much the same way using the rudder-pedals.

Where it ends up once a pair of wings and Gypsy Major six-cylinder inverted engines are added is up for debate presently, but is likely to be the museum operated by the family most notable for the production of Cosworth racing engines. Meanwhile turns out that the self-same Boeing 737 that I have blogged about elsewhere in the posts was here too for five years unbeknown to me, or at least the portion between nose and leading edges.

That has gone to a glamping site in Blackpool that I hope to decamp to in order to report further and sit in that left-hand seat for one more time before I die, you with tears in your eyes like you had when they saved Private Ryan. The restorer we have met here, however, also has a Percival Pembroke that he intends to turn into a touring caravan; although he says the build quality is nowhere near that of the twin built back in the day by De Havilland.

Which is what you might expect of the people who put up the world's first jetliner.

Ed. This literally got the author out of bed today, so let's here it for people doing things to make that effort worthwhile...

The Cloud

With relentless high pressure sitting over Western Europe what little cloud there is comprises mainly cirrus, the ice-crystal clouds at high level forming what are known as mare's tails. My attention was caught however by these, which are contrails that have formed a foundation for a broader spread of cirrus, from jets headed north and chances are, across the Atlantic.

During the grounding of airlines following 9/11 it is thought that the skies were 10% clearer due to the absence of water vapour dispensed by jet engines high in the sky that forms a basis for widespread cover of this kind. And so if you were my age then the skies really were bluer when you were a child.