Rigid Deflatable Boat 2.0

Revised experiment for what it's worth. Germ of an idea but I'm very aware of the input required to bring a concept to market. Pour encourager les autres, maybe?

Video is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIfQIuxer0

Air India, Answer's 42?

Having done due diligence viz. read preliminary crash report, the ‘fuel cut-off’ safety bulletin and Honeywell’s glossy brochure I can confidently state we’re no nearer the truth.

But of most concern to the ‘fliterati’ of which I’m a founding member was the time it took to shed light on an accident involving a near-total loss of hull and life, yet led to no fleet-wide safety recommendation in the aftermath. This can only mean that those in the know were in the know very soon after the event, and possibly within minutes.

For satellite communications routinely relay maintenance data to manufacturers of engines and airframes, including failure analyses. And of these, your double-engine stoppage is given top billing. I’m no expert, but am throwing that ADS-B in there as a possibility?

Back to suicide though (before I set the ‘mise en scene’) ~ of which there are some half-dozen recorded cases and more prior involving life insurance. For there is likely no better time nor way of doing this than stopping both engines on take-off at time ending :42 and just three seconds after becoming airborne. Having been an airline pilot too long, I don’t view it as something too tasteless to ask, or at least not given the tastelessness of two hundred fatalities.

And back to review the only eye-witness account which featured only an alteration to the cabin lighting that we attributed to engine generators dropping off line and the subsequent switching… and the BANG, which remains unattributed?

The latter had me thinking, but firstly let's re-cap those engine fuel cut-off switches. They are and always have been the means of starting or stopping jet turbines. At start a motor run on compressed air cranks the engine to a 'max-motoring' RPM at around 20%, when the fuel is introduced by manually shifting a lever (as was) from CUT-OFF to RUN; and to stop the engines at the gate, simply reverse this motion in quick succession. 

I say switches, because modern airliners with computer-controlled jet-engines use these instead of mechanical controls to provide fuel to start, re-light or stop jet engines when otherwise pilots would have manually operated a lever. If you're still with me, give yourself an airline transport licence.

Now on the ground at the get-go and gate, the switches are operated by PF or pilot flying, which in the case of the ‘accident’ was the co-pilot. Until recently aviation on the Indian sub-co was administered by old farts, and the sensible way to circumvent this was to obtain a licence fraudulently. It meant though that for a long time only the captain started the engines and taxied to the runway, but under pressure from manufacturers this is rarely any longer the case... although some aircraft out there still only sport a single 'steering wheel' or tiller for the captain.

This though is the only time ~ and on the ground ~ when fuel-cut offs are operated unguarded by either pilot or indeed the design of the mechanical switch. Airborne neither switch is manipulated without duel consent, which is natural given you may be about to shut down the one engine you have left. To stop inadvertent selection, what once were levers but are now switches have to be lifted out of a 'detent' or an internal catch before they can be raised or lowered: the switch in the picture is the  type on the 787, less a plastic knob-end (of the kind on switches and not seats).

So far so bad, and so as to the safety bulletin regarding these switches, SAIBS are issued by the thousand. You know when you’re so bored you read the safety card? Well pilots do that with SAIBs. And flying being (like Parkrun) a competitive sport tho' we pretend it is not, there's always the pilot who says 'Let me stop you there, Kev, because I do believe that’s the Honeywell 4TL837-TD you’re referring to and not the TC' whilst adding another tick to his book.

But the SAIB regarding the switch basically says that the guard may be missing if you try it, and if you do so and it is missing then it needs replacing soonest. Such SAIBs however are divided among a to-do list, and I suspect this one to have been given top billing since the crash. Previous though it was a ‘nice to do’ and thus kicked down the road, being something of a pain in everyone's ass, like the curtain-pole you're not fixing until prior the first viewing.

Yet engines do not turn themselves off, because we’re not driving Teslas, so what else might cause this in the circs: whether external, internal or human?

Regards the first, despite aviation analysing anything you could think of forensically ~ and thus being aped for safety purposes by every other organisation ~ one thing I can call to mind that happened like clockwork (yet merely viral among colleagues) was a bang on take-off at Belfast, where 737s used the same runway on the same shuttle to London incessantly and ALWAYS took off at the same point. Thereabouts on the runway there was a depression resulting from wear-and-tear that crew would experience as a marked BANG from the undercarriage much like the government does to us with its pothole program.

On one occasion flying with the good ship Evans ~ who went on to senior roles at Easyjet ~ we heard such a report on departing LHR and left the gear down to return by way of a precaution. (In those days the 737 had a spy-glass under the carpet in the cabin where you could inspect the landing gear… passengers would ask me why they had to move and I'd tell them it was so that we didn't die.

Could this have accounted for both the BANG the survivor heard, along with shock displacement of much-too-easy-to-move cut-off switches? No, but one Poirot would throw into the mix as he leant on the mantelpiece. The prelim confirms it, too, as it states cut-offs were moved three seconds after take-off and a second apart: much, as Poirot points out, as they may were they used during a routine shutdown.

As yet, the CVR only reveals that one or other pilot asked the other why the other just did that ~ as you may, should you be dying ~ but the great and good say they have yet to analyse whose voice is whose. One belongs to a fifty-six year old and the other to a thirty-two, so I guess it’s not rocket-science; the US sufficiently is litigious however to defer this even were it Darth Vader chatting with Minnie Mouse.

So listen up you at the back, because though I’m as bored with this as you are, there will still be questions.

During take-off it remains routine ~ I cannot be bothered checking, it being 2025 ~ for captains to rest their hands on the thrust-levers, so as to be able to call STOP in the event of emergency prior take-off, and pull them back soonest. (In a concession I recall British Airways let PF leave a hand there, the captain's resting gently on top: leading to at least one same-sex marriage at the airline.)

Assuming the captain though to be charged with the thrust levers, the PF or co-pilot is wholly concentrated on keeping several hundred tons of aircraft going straight, as marked by a white dashed line from which ‘cats-eye’ style embedded lighting is off-set. (Eventually during this phase I could tell when the twin tyres of the nose-wheel straddled these lights with nairy a drift left or right, given the knocking that ensued otherwise. I really was that good, at least before that crash that took it all away).

Then at the call of V1 or go-speed the captain will stop covering the thrust-levers to avoid inadvertent mistakes, while PF will pitch toward V2, blue line or safety speed. This is a target for best rate of climb should one engine drop out, beside a few knots for granny. At such time PF will move to cover the thrust-levers, which after lift-off have anyhow come under the command of the auto-thrust: this is because said A/T does not have the last word on reducing thrust in the event of fire or failure, which is left to pilot discretion and a checklist.

So during the take-off the co-pilot has a clear albeit peripheral view of what is going on. Trucks nowadays use cameras with a comprehensive internal and external view and despite it being long a recommendation among aviation authorities it has yet to be implemented, resisted by all concerned and not least aircrew, who may (it has been known) be seeing tits got out up-front.

But in our case under review one or other pilot asks the other why, three seconds after lift-off and prior retraction of the landing gear, the other moved said switches… and we don't know who did what in the absence of video or more info from the CVR or cockpit voice recorder. In response and only seconds later, each switch was set back to RUN in turn, enabling the FADEC (computer controlling the engines) to try for a relight of the sort that is easiest whilst engines are still spinning at speed.

As a consequence one re-light was proving successful ~ likely the later to have been shut down ~ whilst the other proved more problematic. It is intriguing to think that even at this late stage had the landing gear been raised to reduce drag, the aircraft may yet have climbed away. But then life's not always like that.

Reasons though for cutting off fuel switches, by way of re-cap, include (a) life not as good as it could be, and this being a way to end it (b) a mental moment not unlike climbing stairs and wondering why (c) muscle memory that does something that it shouldn’t.

These have all sorts of names amongst what pilots call psycho-babble, but don’t in the UK any more for fear of imprisonment: sequence errors, errors of omission and commission, perception errors and unwritten ‘fuck-you’ errors like landing heavily or taxying extra slowly to aggravate a management who likely deserve it.

What is most telling though is why in this case and when challenged, he who turned the fuel off turned it back on again? Would you do that had you moved the switches OFF on purpose?

Well in a reflex that I’ll call ‘naughty corner syndrome’ and which I hope appears in textbooks, it may be a caught-in-the-act response or simply a change of mind or a reversal of an inadvertent action whilst the situation might still be recovered. For the only other part of the CVR transcript we have relates to a MAYDAY call in which they forgot to identify the aircraft with an emergency and a suggestion to air traffic control that there was simply no (or insufficient) power.

So we’ve considered external (or pot-hole) besides human reasons for de-selection, but what of internal? Moving one wrong switch or any when none require it is known as ‘finger trouble’ among pilots, but inadvertent switch selection might also be known as ‘flying object’ trouble should anything removable collide with switches.

Fighter jet cockpits are as sterile as operating theatres and should you drop even a pin, have to be taken apart until it is found and removed. Airline flight-decks are a smorgasbord of past meals, a detritus  of lost pies and bottles that has worked its way to the deck below and sits on a tarp that protects the electricals: remove it and its contents and you’ve a ready-made picnic.

(Landing once in Sweden I registered something like a large rodent pass by my feet only to disappear thus: a two-litre bottle of water so large and unnecessary as to need reporting to our equally large and unnecessary management.)

'Could then an object have knocked both switches down inadvertently, mon amis?

'Non, and not unless it did so in a sequence one second apart!’ exclaims Poirot.

For here’s the rub: despite switches being selected OFF at time :42 and one pilot asking the other why he had done this, the other said that he had not.

I'm going to leave you with Columbo now in his crumpled mackintosh as he gets to the door, ruffles his hair, holds his hand to his forehead and turns back to say:

'There’s just one thing I can’t figure ~ which I mentioned to Mrs Columbo ~ just how it is that one pilot knows the other has cut the switches anyhow? As a young PF here I'm fixated on those instruments at a critical phase yet able to link dual engine failure to something that never happens and query it for the benefit of the tape?' 

'I’m gonna need a coffee here because I’m wondering if the captain drops his hands from the thrust-levers via those switches, selects them off and and then asks pilot flying why HE just cut the fuel off... that same pilot who says that he hasn’t?'.

For Agatha Christie, mysteries were not something to be considered super-human but invariably something altogether less so. It may yet have been the aircraft and not the crew, but a reason to demur in the case of aircraft accidents is that should the cause prove embarrassing, it no longer matters as we're already onto the next.

Like Gregory House MD, I'm just the one penning stuff on the whiteboard. 

Stretching a Joke

In the ongoing effort to avoid having to fork out for the sort of fabric used in RIBs I rinse what I've got in a mild solution of PVA and water and leave it out to dry in the sun, as the ancient Greeks probably did.

But I mean, there's got to be more to life?

Deflated

When you're down and troubled and need some loving care, and nothin', nothin' is going right I do what Carole King does and take a folder of my patent specifications down from the shelf.

Whereas Kate Moss never got out of bed for less than ten thousand pounds, these days I cannot get excited about projects that look set to shift less than ten thousand units.

Though I think this one might, despite its dating back nearly twenty-five years. Like the drone at www.teledrone.com though it's been revived by advances in electrical motors, specifically outboards of that type.

For bar none, rigid inflatable boats have blown every other type out of the water in terms of numbers. But like the guy in London who figured carpet cleaning could be better done by sucking instead of blowing, there might be nautical mileage in boats that are deflated instead.

And what else would you do on a Monday morning than give it a whirl? And armed with sheets of stretchable fabric and MDF ~ beside a vacuum ~ I did just that. And you can see the result at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLWW7XThBGU

Remarkable thing is, like many of the best inventions the RIB or rigid inflatable was effectively pioneered by a group of sea scouts and their leader at a school nearest the Bristol Channel. And all they did at the get-go was to add plywood at the bottom of the boat.

The advantage of a deflatable boat however is that it could be flat-packed and ready to deploy in seconds, and cheap as chips: think of it as IKEA on water.

Ultimately whether I advance this or the drone depends on which I see as being the most fun. And as I can sit on it and float gently down a stream like the Leeds and Liverpool canal then this has to be a contender, as life is but a dream. And as it appears from the work of Desmond Hoare (RIB), Christopher Cockerell (hovercraft) and Tony Blair (Iraq), we've a habit of blowing things up and being left deflated...

The test ~ with my trusty Miele on its lowest setting ~ sounded like a descent to the Titanic in a home-built submarine. Watch on full volume, therefore, and be afraid.

Fold

Here's a remarkable fact for you: since the 1970s the rate of company formation in the US has halved and it is broadly an indicator of the economic health of a country.

Nonetheless it remains true ~ since the Industrial Revolution ~ that as often as not the key inventions which underly our prosperity stem from individuals prior to their incorporation.

In the US it is still possible to procure sizeable investment prior to incorporation and I've attracted interest in the recent past to the tune of a half million dollars from an organisation that appears to prefer to review prospects on that basis.

In the UK, in contrast, whilst there is little interest in investing in an individual with an ideas nowadays, there was once in the shape of the 'British Technology Group' that financed the development of an idea of mine back in the 1980s. The evolution of this government initiative stemmed from the amalgamation of the NRDC and the NEB, the former having financed development of the hovercraft: which also sprang from individual experimentation.

What happened to the BTG is instructive, however. Assigned the task of commercial exploitation of inventions from both universities and individuals, it was best known for having backed the development of MRI scanners and monoclonal antibodies, of the sort that we practically depend on nowadays for surviving pandemics, for inst.

Inevitable then that it should have been privatised and like all else stemming from Thatcher's efforts to empower individuals... sold off to a US corporation.

So for those of you mulling the government grant I applied for (and which doubtless because of this blog and the transparency it provides you've yet to reply to)... you're off the hook.

P.S. had to list under aerospace manufacture as nothing related to the production of drones, tho' there would still be a classification for whalebone corset manufacturers. 

Death Trap?

In a turbulent world I like to highlight the 'good news' stories, but there aren't any.

Here though an issue of note that touches on the past which is all I have nowadays. No fewer than 180 ex-services personnel are suing the Ministry of Defence for early presentations of various cancers... and winning, despite the MoD refusing to accept liability.

The issue appears to focus on the inhalation of exhaust fumes from helicopters, and looking at the pictures you could understand why: invariably helicopter turbines are situated on the roof, while winch men like the ones pictured in the BBC article were sat all day at the doorway directly underneath.

Many though are ex-pilots, some of whom trained the royal family who were given helicopters to play with, sensibly because this was viewed as the least likely way to die: unless you spend your working life in one. Accordingly there could be a simpler explanation, and that relates to the cabin air drawn from the compressor stages of the engine and used for cabin heating and cooling, beside pressurisation in airliners in particular.

Briefly, the compressor spools go round and round and their bearings are lubricated with oil to keep that happening and when oil overheats (as it likes to do in bearings) then the oil vaporises and chemical additives are ingested eventually into the lungs. 

This was an issue among airline pilots, but you are up against airline manufacturers and oil companies and the revenue they provide their governments... not forgetting the fact that together they get us to the seaside each summer. Failing to investigate such issues is a corporate corruption that we all take part in, therefore, in the way that we're all involved in killing Russians and Palestinians whether we choose to or not.

One reason these campaigns die:

The BA cabin fumes campaign refers to efforts by aviation unions and some crew members to raise awareness and address concerns about potential health risks associated with contaminated air in aircraft cabins. This campaign highlights instances of "fume events" where engine oil fumes, potentially containing toxic compounds, enter the aircraft's ventilation system and contaminate the air breathed by pilots, cabin crew, and passengers.

...is that the people running them keep dying, so that it's a bit like trying to arrange football tournaments from the trenches in WW1: sadly they're likely to be one-offs.

Though many years ago I did attend a small convention at Cranfield, which was like a coach-tour to Lourdes... following lame, wheelchair-bound and confused people into a small hall for a series of personal presentations. Remember the fallout from the Icelandic volcanic ash that shut down trans-Atlantic aviation? Well the captain who flew the Easyjet flight immediately following its engines having had a chemical rinse was sat like 'House' with his stick behind me.

And what struck me too was the number of oil-rig workers: the same services that turbines provide airliner cabins also service the living quarters and all else on North Sea oil-rigs. And indeed I had myself experience of a 'fume event' shortly after the engine start on an old Airbus taxying out at Manchester one night, its tell-tale odour of 'sweaty socks' being unmistakable; albeit most co-pilots wore sweaty socks.

The thing is, children, that when adults get together in groups they're emboldened to act in immoral ways that otherwise guilt and shame would most likely prevent them from pursuing in their individual lives. Yes, we all enjoy watching people die on YouTube over coffee and pastries, but it's not something we actively participate in until we join the airlines, or the Catholic Church.

Funny thing is ~ and I came close from time to time ~ were we to be asked whether we still wanted to fly helicopters if it meant dying sooner, most of us would still say yes the way few teenagers connect flying a fast jet with killing themselves or others, at least at the outset.

Set homework for next week: An Irish Airman Foresees his Death, W.B.Yeats.

Wired

Whilst we enjoy the sunshine here in the UK and people in flip-flops at a place not altogether different from the Nova music festival sing along to chants about killing Jews, some 2000 miles to the East there's a whole different vibe: the optical.

In fact the Ukrainians mark 2025 not so much the year Rod Stewart shuffled onto the stage at Glastonbury, as the year during which warfare changed radically again.

And its war by Deliveroo, Ukrainians making their own napalm from bulk purchases of soap and so forth, and dropping it in lemonade bottles.

Optical drones though sprang from a 'military accelerator' deployed in Russia; which differs from the model here where we ponder by committee for months prior to awarding the grant to BAE Systems after all, because 'nobody ever got sacked for buying IBM'... until now.

In fact the much-vaunted recovery of territory on the eastern border of Ukraine has been reversed almost exclusively by what is effectively fishing twine: optical fibres up to 30km long that preclude the jamming of communications with drones, whilst allowing deaths to be viewed in colour and at a higher resolution. Given life on the sofa here, what's not to like?

The irony is that if you check out the Ali Babas selling these reels ~ relax everyone, I don't need proscribing ~ you would never guess what they were for. Extra long-range fly-fishing aside, however, there's only use for them and it's blowing people up to make money on YouTube.

Which like Alan Partridge I was going to mention in the chat box, but thought better of it.

The off-the-shelf netting that we use here mainly for protection against 'black ops' like golf is a reliable form of protection... will look nice in the Cotswolds, won't it?