Back to the Future #6

Take time out to see how I'm doing, and realising when I refer to the 'back of the cigarette packet' sketch that the legs are too short at 12" and should have been 18" instead. Unforgivable in view of the fact the sketch appears on the laptop ~ as the world's saddest wallpaper ~ and reluctantly have to tell myself I'm fired.

It's not the end of the world, however, as there'll still be sufficient clearance for the props once on the plane, and will make for entertaining YouTube footage if not. So we crack on regardless, as the plan is to build three proofs-of-concept: one to demo displacement in and planing on water; another to demonstrate a hover from land over to sea by way of launch; and one configured to fly above surfaces of one sort or another in ground-effect.

Those lengths of stripwood down the sides incidentally are set to stiffen the skis as and when they are fitted to the centre-section and flexed upward at the front end. This coincides with the 2026 Winter Olympics, and you like me will have been most interested not on what the athletes are doing, but by the fact that snowboards too are stiffened down their central-section. Exciting, and consider offering my services as sports commentator.

Back to the Future #5

Working to each material's strengths ~ and with clamps not so tight as to squeeze out all the adhesive ~ I've driven self-tappers through each stripwood beside the foam laminate too.

Don't drill all the way through both spars, as you'll want the fasteners to take best hold of each side. I've also used over-long screws because (a) I've a box of them and (b) the ends can be taken off with an angle-grinder, making me look like a real man in the eyes of Shania Twain.

Back to the Future #4

Moving on I've set a clamp here because the depth of foam laminate is slightly less than that of those uprights. Not working to nanometers here, are we Gromit?

Back to the Future #3

Slip those babies on and park the assembly like so with the adhesive yet to cure, so that the brackets don't droop prior our next step.

Back to the Future #2

Now we park the module on a block of water to raise it up, not so much so that it can stand on mountains as to keep the floor from getting adhesive all over it. This done I've applied a squirt to either side of each end-cap, like so.

Back to the Future #1

What I've done this morning ~ the first in the UK in the last forty days in which it has not poured with rain and soaked the garage floor ~ is to create those brackets which will fit the legs to each corner of the centre-body.

To do that I ran the design through a 3-D render program and ported it into another to optimise the aerodynamics. Afterwards I uploaded the files into my 3-D printer to produce these fabulous looking units...and like you, I'm stoked 👏💃👽🍆 !

Ed. What he actually did was saunter into the garage in a dressing-gown, annoyed at no longer having an excuse not to, and kicked a few pieces of timber prior to screwing them together.

Fat Cat

Before we recommence building our tiny flat-cat, a look at the world's biggest and fastest ferry, which is destined to go back and forth across the River Plate in as little as eight feet of water but to do so carrying thousands of passengers and hundreds of cars off the back of 24,000 HP of electrical motors driving eight jet-pumps.

What destroyed the cross-Channel hovercraft in the UK was the above: aluminium wave-piercing catamaran hulls that could travel not much slower, but carry rather more and at much less cost. It was pioneered ~ and still run ~ by Robert Clifford from around 1972 on, who was lucky enough to live on an island (Tasmania) whose connection with the Australian mainland was severed by a bridge collapse: following which he transported nine million passengers in his earlier and more rudimentary craft by way of proof-of-concept.

It looks like a trimaran, incidentally, but isn't... the centre-hull is an effort to reduce the wave-slamming that cats can be prone to and which is not the most comfortable for passengers.

The takeaway for ourselves are the facts that for many applications you cannot beat a cat, and for an increasing number you cannot beat electrical motive power either.

The latter too in this case is provided by a Finnish company that specialises in such drive-trains. The Finns, who live in a cold and inhospitable part of Northern Europe and have among he highest living costs in the world, nonetheless produce all sorts of weird shit. I move containers around a lot, and to pick them off semi-trailers and drop them elsewhere requires a whole lot of mobile crane or 'heavy-lifter'. And who makes them, as per the above, almost exclusively?

Finns. Who like Tasmanians rather put us to shame. You could say the US is expert at shuffling electrons (via the 'net), the likes of these people are experts at moving molecules (via hulls and cranes) whilst the Brits excel at moving things via chemical connections in the brain: music, media, medicine, law, and AI. And sport, principally the watching of.

It's why our economy survives ~ just ~ long after we stopped making things.