G-Force

Passed through Manchester's airport recently, where one of three chandeliers from the original 1960's terminal was dismantled as the basis for a rather less ambitious display altogether in the newest international terminal. A note I hadn't previously spotted reported how the remaining two had been donated to museums, like this one here at St Helens' World of Glass.

And something I hadn't seen intact for five decades or more. But St Helens is where the float glass method was introduced in 1959 and which 90% of the world employs in its production.

There's a connection with flight in a way, too, for all three of the historical means of making window-glass involved manipulating gravity, like the Wright Brothers did.

Originally there'd be a gob of molten glass on a stick which you'd spin into a disc to cut into shape. Later still it would be blown like a bottle and hung in a molten state over a furnace so that it would form a cylinder that could be rolled out like pastry. And finally there was molten glass formed on molten tin, so that gravity did the rest in issuing the flattest-possible product.

The process reduced the cost of making glass by five times, so that inevitably a company as successful as Pilkington's fell into foreign ownership. Now building on Mrs Thatcher's success in destroying industry, the government hope to send it the way of steel as too environmentally costly in use of energy... which is already priced higher than elsewhere in Europe.

So get to St Helens to see what's left of it. They've exhibitions too and the artwork I liked most appears below. Had I £7000 and been Maurice Saatchi I'd have bought it, but I'm more like the guy in the picture.

The museum has moved from the original Pilkington's site to become a part of the library and cafe. Part of it is accessed by crossing the Sankey Canal, which built in 1757 claims to be the Industrial Revolution's oldest. Fans of the 1761 Bridgewater Canal however point out that theirs was not based on an existing natural waterway.

Horse and Groom the Bell Tolls

Snapped this at a junction in St Helens, and pretty pleased with what resulted from a ten year old phone and a windscreen. Invariably it's the traveling community who splash out on funerals; the rest of us more concerned with not eating away at the legacy.

Prime Suspect

The 'Prime' on the side relates to Amazon Prime, tho' missing the smiling logo and possibly because it's just killed five people and injured several more.

Two things of note are (a) the generous runway length and (b) the fact that landing generally requires less of it altogether than the take-off.

The cost-cutting model that has worked so well on the ground in warehouses and elsewhere ~ not least haulage ~ sadly does not translate nearly so well into the air.

(Delivery drones, despite being as yet in limited use, appear to come to grief on a fairly regular basis; but that's altogether easier to conceal than what you see here.)

Pay peanuts, however, and you'll get flying monkeys.

Ed. The cargo aircraft overran the runway at Miami this week. We considered calling the post 'Sub Prime' instead. What do you think? And do we care?

Life a Lottery

Mentioned elsewhere that you're rarely going to remember more than a salient fact from any one book that you read and from Jon Ronson's book The Castle it is likely to be this.

In 2015 happy high-school girl Brandi Bragg's grandfather won the Powerball lottery and by 2017 she would be dead.

Ronson, who produced the podcast Things Fell Apart, suggests the reason is found among the researches of Emile Durkheim ~ founder of sociology ~ back in 1897.

He discovered that social change of any kind ~ even for the apparent better ~ does actually increase the rates of suicide. He attributed it to the fact a world swept from under people's feet that leaves them without ground-rules and a sense of purpose, suffering from a zombified condition he termed 'anomie'.

His supporters point at the collapse of communism in the East, following which the average age of life expectancy fell after 1989 by five years from 62 years to 57.

The thing about life is that whilst complaining about it, having to go to either factory to parade-ground leaves you with less time to dwell upon it.

At the same time people are no longer constrained by society rules: sound familiar?

All a question of being careful what you wish for, and the reason I'm happy to mix driving trucks with experiments in ground-effect.

You'd probably be suggesting that I never bring anything to a conclusion?

But then neither does life, with the exception of death.

Durkheim on a good day

HUGE #4

Here at Wickes DIY on the outskirts of Liverpool we can see the underlying basis of our craft-in-the-making. Do we remember what XPS stood for? Yes... Extruded Poly Styrene!

I've gone for this because it's the thickest they do and while greater thicknesses are out there, they are often laminated on just one side.

Also however it's a match for a common width of timber at 20mm that is practically three-quarters of an inch. The booms supporting the tailplane or stabiliser will be a square spar of this dimension, though what Daddy will bring home in the way of the lateral spars and hydro-skis will depend on what the store has to offer.

I did tell them what I thought, which was that they've STILL left out how good it is for building maritime drones besides tiling bathrooms.

HUGE #3

We saw this a few days ago and what I would say is that ~ as the great Bob Symes suggested ~ inventors tend to succeed at designs they keep re-visiting. This, a plan view of something that looks more practical altogether, is a starting point as we get to thinking about dimensions and off-the-shelf materials.

In fact though those hydro-skis extend almost eight feet forward as per this draft, I would like to cut that in half for then we can use raw material no longer than that at each stage of the game. Eight feet or 2440mm is a broadly available spec worldwide and stems from the fact that four-by-eight feet sheets are about as much as you'd be able to muster without being blown away on the way home.

Searching the 'net, ground-effect like EVs and flying taxis has come of age with the advances enjoyed in electrical motors and storage.

And we want to be a part of it, don't we?

The foreplane seen here we can omit too, because firstly there's no need for it and secondly we've no sheet material left from the template to spare.

HUGE #2

We must first dust off the archive amongst my patent filings...

https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search?q=Colin%20Hilton

...and beside marvelling at how much of my life was wasted in fruitless pursuits, appearing as a third entry is broadly speaking what we are aiming at.

Appearances however are deceptive, which is good because this looks fairly crap.

Nonetheless it will form the basis of what we shall use for building at a smaller scale altogether than of late.

It stems from the fact that the mono-ski version (featured at the top of the search list) literally wouldn't stand up without the support of out-riggers that I didn't want.

There have been ~ besides sail-planes ~ aircraft with out-riggers or stabilisers for support, but they have been few and far between. Which tells you something.

In fact I can think of only the U2 spy-plane that is most famous for being shot down and the Hawker Harrier that went on to more success altogether... though what we have to replace it invariably uses a conventional undercarriage.

And so now you know.